


The Northern Lights

by ThisChairIsMyHomeNow



Category: Captain America (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Angst, Angst with a Happy Ending, Aurora Borealis, Camping, Canon Compliant, Captain America and His Sweating Commandos, Caves, Cuddling & Snuggling, Friendship, Healing, Historical References, Hope, Hurt/Comfort, Intimacy, LET THEM BE NAKED IN EVERY SENSE OF THE WORD, LET THEM BE TENDER, M/M, On the Run, Pillow Talk, Pining, Post-Civil War, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Recovery, Slow Burn, Wakanda, World Travel, the Sistine Chapel is hardly a carnival ride
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-10-25
Updated: 2016-10-25
Packaged: 2018-08-24 13:15:17
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 21,474
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8373568
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ThisChairIsMyHomeNow/pseuds/ThisChairIsMyHomeNow
Summary: “I can’t feel my face,” Steve shivers.“I can’t feel my left arm,” Bucky says, deadpan. Steve barks out a laugh. It’s all white puffs of vapor in the chilly air.“This the spot?”“Nah,” Bucky pants, breath ragged from the long ascent up a mountain. “Almost there.”





	1. The Northern Lights

**Author's Note:**

> Special thanks to @otherpartyfavors for the beta! 
> 
> Me: How do I even summarize this?  
> G: Be succinct  
> Me: GAY SUPERHERO RELUCTANTLY GETS THERAPY IN THE JUNGLES OF WAKANDA, THEN GOES ON A COVERT ROAD TRIP  
> G: Maybe not that succinct 
> 
> Further notes in a separate chapter, because there are entirely too many.

_“So what do you do now? You get to find your own way to dig out a heart and shake it off and hold it up to the light again.” –_ Barbara Kingsolver, _The Poisonwood Bible_

  
  
**ALASKA, PRESENT DAY**

* * *

 

 

The funny thing about a tundra is that flowers still grow, sometimes, when the snow is thin like it is tonight. Bucky does his best to avoid crushing the small blossoms that adorn the trail as they finish their hike. 

“I can’t feel my face,” Steve shivers.

“I can’t feel my left arm,” Bucky says, deadpan. Steve barks out a laugh. It’s all white puffs of vapor in the chilly air.

“This the spot?”

“Nah,” Bucky pants, breath ragged from the long ascent up a mountain. “Almost there.”

It’s cold, but it could be colder, and the sky is a black canvas smattered with Milky Way swirls. For a long moment they stand at the summit, drinking in the stillness of midnight, _hoping_. The forecast is promising, but the Aurora Borealis can’t always be predicted. It shows up when it damn well pleases and not a moment before.

“Shit, I can practically see Russia from up here. Wave to my motherland.”

“You know that ain’t your motherland, Buck.”

Bucky points both middle fingers in the general direction of Siberia.

“Remember when you said you never wanted to see snow again for as long as you lived?” Steve asks, looking out.

“When did I say that?”

“Back in Wakanda.”

“ _For as long as I lived_? Christ, that’s dramatic. You sure it wasn’t _you_ who said that?”

“It was definitely you,” Steve insists, shoving him playfully.

Then Steve’s grabbing the lapels of his coat and pulling him into a rough-and-tumble kiss, his big cold nose bumping into Bucky’s on his way in. Steve laughs a little at the joy of it, the freedom. He laughs right into Bucky’s open mouth and it’s the best thing Bucky’s ever tasted.

“We’re gonna miss the show if we start all that up,” Bucky says, breaking off slowly, savoring it. He pulls Steve down so they can sit on a boulder together. Steve slings his arm around Bucky’s shoulders for warmth and smacks a kiss to his temple.

Bucky strips the heavy glove off of his flesh hand and grabs a fist full of snow. He kneads the powder between his fingers, reclaiming it, and he knows it’s time.

“Steve?” he whispers.

“Mm?”

“There’s something I gotta tell you…”

 

 

**WAKANDA, BEFORE**

* * *

 

“I don’t wanna talk about it,” Bucky says dully and not for the first time.

The psychiatrist gives him a hesitant smile, no teeth. “That is understandable, Sergeant Barnes. Given the circumstances.”

She scribbles on her notepad and then turns and murmurs to her assistant in a melodic-sounding language punctuated by clicks.

“Is there anything else I can do for you?”

He doesn’t want to come right out and say it, but leaving him the hell alone is the answer to _that_ question. Instead he shrugs silently and she infers as much. After a few reassuring statements, she tugs on her lab coat and bids him goodbye and the door clinks shut behind her, thank God.

Больница. The word ‘hospital’ is slang for prison in Russian spy-talk, Romanoff had reminded him yesterday with a sly smile. Isn’t that just fitting.

 

 

T'Challa is sprinting as quickly as his body will allow toward a jet taking off in the distance. Members of his royal guard, the Dora Milaje, flank behind him, some of them limping and gritting their teeth. When the aircraft disappears into the dawn light, entirely invisible and untraceable in stealth mode, he growls out Wakandan curses and kicks the ground.

He turns around to speak to his head guard, Okoye, issuing an order in his native tongue:

_“We must warn the Americans.”_

 

 

Steve is brushing his teeth when he hears a knock at the front door of the guesthouse. He spits, wipes his lips, and goes to investigate. Natasha and Sam have made it to the spacious foyer before him, their rooms being closer. By the time he reaches them, the door is already open, revealing the King of Wakanda himself wearing a fresh bruise on his unusually worried face. A wall of warm, humid air rolls over the three of them as they beckon him inside.

“I am sorry to interrupt you so early,” he says apologetically as he shuts the door behind him. “But there is an urgent matter.”

And Steve just can’t help it, it’s a reflex, always on his mind: “Does this have anything to do with Sergeant Barnes?”

“Yes,” T’Challa answers. But he hesitates to elaborate all of the sudden, and Sam reads the situation thoughtfully.

“Coffee,” Sam says, gesturing toward the kitchen. “This looks like it requires coffee. If you people drink that sort of thing. C’mon.”

 

 

Bucky wakes in his hospital bed to a pained female shout and he wonders, almost casually: _in my head, or real_? It’s a familiar question for him, these days. He’s up now, bare feet touching the cool tile of his medical quarters. He cranes his neck outside his room into the hallway, and upon seeing a flurry of injured Dora Milaje, his question is answered: _real._

The assessment: four in the hallway itself, two occupants in that room to the left, three in the other room talking, and he knows without knowing there’s an orderly in the stairwell, and someone standing guard down that hall, she’d be easy to disarm, he could go through that window, climb up—

Wait, _what_?

He’s a guest in this building, for crying out loud. He shakes off whatever the hell kinda paranoia _that_ was, just in time for Okoye to show up. She’s here to escort him to T’Challa for reasons unexplained, other than something about a fellow Dora going AWOL, which at least helps answer the mystery of why so many of them appear to have hand-to-hand combat injuries.

 

 

Sam offers T’Challa and Steve and Natasha chairs and mugs, and the kitchen is nothing but clinking and shuffling for a moment as they situate themselves at a large, sleek table. T’Challa takes the head. Steve sits across from Sam and Natasha, expectant.

“There was a major security breach at the Mound this morning—our fortress,” T’Challa finally spills. “I have been betrayed by one of my own guards, Ayo.”

Sam is shocked. “I was just talking to her yesterday.”

“She took off with sensitive intelligence and sizable amount of Vibranium,” T’Challa continues. “And we all know what Vibranium can do in the wrong hands.”

Steve leans forward, brows furrowed at the recollection of Ultron. He’s ready for action. “How can we help?”

A muscle in T’Challa’s jaw starts jumping, not from anger, but sadness. For the briefest of seconds, he looks unbearably _young_. He’s the leader of the wealthiest African nation and a boy without a father, both. But then he squares his shoulders and speaks evenly:

“My military will handle her,” T’Challa says. “I do not know why she stole, or for whom she is working, or for how long this was planned. But until I do, I think we must operate under the assumption that your whereabouts are about to be discovered.”

 

 

Bucky only got sent to the principal’s office three times in his life (Steve’s fault, albeit indirectly) and he feels a similar nervy feeling in his stomach at the thought of seeing T’Challa. He likes T’Challa, he really does, but the man also gives him the jitters. He reckons that T’Challa can see right into people’s souls, and he’s not sure he wants anybody peeping at his at the moment.

T’Challa has an essential _goodness_ about him, not unlike Steve, and that sort of glow is even more blinding than the sun that bears down on him as he walks to the guesthouse for the first time. His eyes blink furiously as he attempts to focus on the back of Okoye’s head as she leads. The scene beyond her is so vast and vivid it makes him dizzy: mountains jutting into the misty skyline, waterfalls, and about million damp trees with fronds reaching out to touch him like gangly green fingers. The flora and fauna of Wakanda look like something straight out of a National Geographic magazine, the kind he used to save up to buy. But the buildings dotting the scene are almost like spaceships, the furniture futuristic. It’s like living in the Garden of Eden and on Mars all at once.

Not that he’s actually gotten out in it much. He’s been out of Cryostasis for five weeks, but it’s mostly been a blur of deprogramming treatments—CT scans and something the scientists called Extinction Therapy, a name Bucky found humorous and ominous at the same time. It mostly involved activating him over and over, but instead of giving him a mission, they pumped him chock-full of feel good drugs until the conditioning wore off.

 _Extinction._ It isn’t an accurate term, turns out, because while the words can’t hijack him anymore, they’re very much _alive_ and he still thinks about them all the damn time, hears them even. Sam Wilson calls it Post-Traumatic Stress. Sam Wilson talks a lot.

Steve and Natasha Romanoff busted Sam out of prison back while Bucky was still in the freezer, and Bucky woke to their cautious but hopeful faces, all three. The rest of Steve’s jailbreak-friends (when did Steve get so many friends?) went their separate ways to hide, but Natasha and Sam are in Wakanda because _Steve’s_ in Wakanda. And Steve’s here because Bucky is. So ultimately they’re here because he’s here, and he’s not sure how to feel about it, other than guilty.

Natasha and Sam have been visiting him, about as often as Steve, and sometimes all together. The conversations are predictable by now: Sam makes a few biting wisecracks but then seems genuinely and annoyingly interested in Bucky’s mental health. He asks Bucky a lotta questions and Bucky’s answer is always _“I don’t wanna talk about it”_ because Jesus, who would?

Natasha flirts, just recreationally, a game to keep from real topics, because she knows he doesn’t want to dive into them, and maybe she doesn’t either. They banter about nothing. It’s her version of doing him a favor, and Bucky likes that. She looks like the kinda girl he would’ve asked to a dancehall back in the old days when he was desperately trying to prove a point to himself. She also looks like she knows several different ways to slit his throat, and Bucky also likes that.

Steve visits the most often, of course, and they play Remember When? and Steve always seems so astonished when Bucky can recall Brooklyn-related specifics. Since the electroshock wipes stopped, his memories have been slowly returning. Back in Bucharest, they were a trickle from a faucet; now that he’s around Steve, it’s like a goddamn waterfall, and that’s the whole problem and solution, right there. Steve makes him _remember._ It feels like a miracle some days. Except when he wakes from nightmares so violent that he vomits on the hospital room floor. Then it’s a curse.

The three of them have been begging him to move into the guesthouse, and he’s dismissed the invitations. Steve is the worst about it. That hasn’t changed. The world is different: the war with the Nazis is over, and apparently the cars in Wakanda have _batteries_ instead of gas tanks. The cars have _plugs_. The whole world has changed, but Stevie Rogers is still a relentless little shit, and that fact is almost a comfort when it’s not an absolute pain in the ass.

Steve is right about Bucky’s situation too: there’s no real reason for him to be in the medical wing of the palace anymore. His deprogramming is complete, technically speaking, and he hasn’t had a single physical issue with his new metal prosthetic (Adamantium mixed with Vibranium, no markings) since they suited him with it.

But up until now he’s avoided the guesthouse because, well. Because.

Because _what if?_ and somehow equally troubling, _what now?_

What if HYDRA has more surprises left inside of him? Cut off one head, two more shall take its place, they always said. How was this any different? He can feel something ugly and retched buried in him, waiting. What if there’s some hidden metal landmine primed and ready to be stepped on when he least expects? He spent a little time in Vietnam in the 60s. He knows about landmines.

Then there’s the question of _what now_ , which makes his jaw clench.

Truth be told, he’s not used to having _options_ , even before HYDRA and Zola and the table with the restraints. Whether it was the draft or his Ma’s Irish Catholic expectations or scraping by on a few bucks a week and a prayer—some force or another has always had his hands tied.

He doesn’t know what to _do_ with them now. 

A few weeks ago, Steve had tried to _hold his fucking hand_. They were up on the roof of the hospital wing, standing side-by-side and admiring the view, when he had interlaced their fingers, as if it were a simple, completely normal gesture. Bucky had pulled away gently and shoved his hands in his pockets and neither of them acknowledged it afterward, of course not. Same as the way they never acknowledged anything back in Brooklyn.

In the old days, there was a cycle: lust, shame, and burial. Bucky liked his best friend’s body, especially when he slept next to him on a cold night. He liked the way they aligned together, smaller back pressed against broader chest, arms tangled. But he liked it so much that his dick would tent in his flannels and he’d have to turn over and away, frightened of all the trouble they’d face if the covers were torn off the truth.

One thousand times he buried his desire alive and hoped it would die, and then he’d take a curvaceous girl out on the town to dance on the grave.

Repeat.

Bucky knew how Steve felt back then just like he knows how Steve feels now. Subtlety is not exactly Steve’s strong suit: He used to draw sketches of Bucky, admiration in every detailed pencil line. He charged into a Nazi work camp all by himself with nothing but a gun and some fucking _stage props_ just to save him, for Christ’s sake. But Bucky’s been quieter, and with good reason: Steve was targeted and beat up enough as it was back in Brooklyn without acting queer on top of it. The last thing Bucky needed was Steve getting arrested or murdered in an alleyway over that. Bucky’s a realist, always has been. He was pragmatically protective, downright tactical, and not a martyr, no sir.

And now? The world’s changed, sure, and they even have parades for that sort of thing, and that’s all well and good. But Bucky knows it’s not society he’s afraid of anymore; it’s just himself and the thought of those landmines, and the fact that when he looks at Steve, he can feel _everything everything_ , the whole of his life, and it’s too much. It’s too much, it’s too much, it’s—

 

 

“My Dora are prepared to fight off any attempts to apprehend you and your friends here,” T’Challa reminds Steve.

Steve scrubs a hand over his stubble, conflicted. He hates to run from a fight, but: “After everything you’ve done for us, I don’t want your people at any extra risk. We’ll lay low somewhere else.”

A faint, thankful smile flashes across T’Challa’s face. “I can offer a quinjet and supplies. I advise you head north into the jungle quickly. There you would be safe.”

 

 

The guesthouse isn’t so much a _house_ as a _mansion_ , Bucky thinks as he stands in front of it, staring. Okoye beckons him in after she realizes he’s hesitating at the door, mouth agape. While she disappears to the kitchen, Steve is suddenly at his side in the foyer (which must have 14-foot ceilings, holy shit).

“This place could give the Plaza a run for its money,” Bucky murmurs, a little stunned, and with a few steps forward the point is only driven home further: there’s a pool in the living room.

“Yeah, sure, the Plaza, _maybe_ ,” Steve says. “But it’s got nothing on our old apartment. There aren’t even any _rats_ here.”

Bucky’s face splits into an unexpected smile. For a brief second, they’re roommates again, standing in that ratty old studio from 1937—the one with the tub right next to the stove. Mornings were chaotic in that windowless piece of shit tenement. He’d be frying baloney and the grease would spit right into Steve’s soapy bathwater.

_“OUCH. Christ, Buck. Could you at least wait until I’m done?!”_

_“This the thanks I get for cooking for you? This the thanks I get? You ingrate.”_

The pleasure of the moment is over as quickly as it comes, however. Bucky’s mind flashes inexplicably to the clang and spark of metal of the helicarrier in D.C., and Steve’s split-lipped expression right before he fell from it: delirious, the life fading from his eyes. It’s too much it’s too much it’s—

He looks away, down, heart racing. And then he hears it in his head, the sound of it: _Zhelaniye._ _Rzhavet._ _Sem—_

“…Buck?” he hears Steve ask as if from a million miles away. “You okay?”

“Yeah,” he lies. “I’m fine.”

He shakes it off and then asks a question to which he’s pretty sure he already knows the answer: “Our cover is blown, isn’t it?”

“ ‘Fraid so.”

It’s just as well. Bucky had grabbed his (very light) Go Bag on the way out of the hospital wing anyway.

There’s a rush for Steve and Natasha and Sam to pack up their possessions into duffle bags, and then they’re shaking T’Challa’s hand profusely and arranging further covert supply drops and saying thank you more times than anyone can count. Sam pulls T’Challa into a hug, even, and Bucky sort of wishes he could do the same, but human touch still makes him skittish and clammy, quite frankly. Bucky wildly thinks about sending him a handwritten thank you note later, because his mother raised him right, after all.

 

 

“Buckle up, boys,” Natasha says as she takes the pilot seat. Sam sits down next to her, eyes on the dash and the assortment of buttons, and Bucky can’t help but admire the whole cockpit too. Then Sam starts ranting about how Wakanda actually invented the quinjet and SHIELD bought designs from them, not the other way around. Okay, then. It’s certainly more high tech than anything he’s ever seen, that’s for sure. The whole thing is solar powered, of all things, and stocked full of flashlights and dried foods and bedrolls and who knows what else.  

Natasha plugs in coordinates and pulls out of the hanger, reflectors up and running. As they take off their eyes are glued to the beauty of the terrain shrinking beneath them.

“Not a bad view,” Natasha comments. “All this green. Beats looking at snow, right, Barnes?”

“I could go my whole life without seeing snow again,” Bucky says insistently.

“Me too,” Steve chimes in from beside him. Sam says nothing for once, but he looks like he agrees with them.

Natasha turns north. “You fellas ready for our jungle vacation?”

“About that,” Sam says seriously. “I know T’Challa said it was safe out by the border, but shouldn’t we…Oh, I don’t know, fly as far away as humanly possible?”

“We don’t have to go far,” Bucky says. “Not yet, anyway.”

“You sure about that?” Sam inquires, askance.

“Barnes is right,” Natasha says.

Sam still looks unconvinced.

“I hid in the basement of the Smithsonian for months after…everything,” Bucky admits. “But let me guess: you two took off for Russia first thing to find me.”

Steve looks like he might punch Bucky, or cry. It’s a toss up.

“You always were awful at hide-and-go-seek,” Bucky says to Steve, the corners of his mouth turning up into smile.

 

 

 

**NUZURI MOUNTAIN RANGE, WAKANDAN-GHUDAZIAN BORDER**

* * *

 

Wakanda has spiders the size of a human hand. Bigger, even. Bucky makes this discovery during the third week of their stint in the mountains while on a mission to get water from the river. He doesn’t flinch at the giant arachnid blocking his path. He doesn’t kill the creature either—there’s no need for that—and about the moment he considers catching it and keeping it as some kind of pet, it scuttles away up a tree, as if it heard the thought.

Onward. The river is another mile away, and he’ll haul a few buckets, which they will purify by boiling and drink greedily before starting the goddamn process all over again. Life completely off the grid in the middle of a jungle is busier than expected, because basic daily tasks take _hours_ , and truth be told he and Steve and Sam are just a bunch of city slickers turned soldiers. Sure, they’ve camped before, on assignment or otherwise, but never quite so primitively, and certainly not so close to the motherfucking equator, a place that requires anti-venom, of all things.

Steve strongly discourages Natasha and Sam from wandering too far, insisting that he could handle a green mamba bite a whole lot better than they could, malaria too. Sam takes this to heart, popping preventive medicines and occasionally even wearing mosquito netting like an old lady’s shawl, while Natasha ignores all caution completely.

Natasha seems oddly in her element, gathering berries and mangos and disappearing into the thickest parts of the jungle with nothing but rocks and somehow returning with dead rabbits. She also digs up edible tubers she calls manioc, which taste like slightly bitter potatoes and not half bad. She’s become the team huntress and forager, while the rest of them have fallen into their own distinct roles:

Steve has the damn near constant task of hauling firewood. He pulls entire trees up by their roots, because it’s less conspicuous and unseemly than leaving chopped stumps in the ground, and because he seems to need the outlet. More than once Bucky has stumbled upon Steve hacking up downed limbs in something close to an angry fit, but Bucky doesn’t ask questions.

Sam is chief of the cookfire and keeps the flame burning. The jungle is thick, so the smoke can’t puncture the canopy, thank God—and thank Natasha too—she knows which leaves burn best. The four of them spend most mornings by the fire, sitting cross-legged in the wild grass or on logs. Sam claims fresh air and sunlight is good for Bucky’s brain. Bucky responds by shifting his metal arm in _just_ the right way that it reflects the light straight into Sam’s eyes, which makes Sam squint and say, _“Fuck you too”_ while Steve just smiles, bright and 100-Watt, into his coffee or whatever the hell they’re drinking that day. Sam has started to very deliberately put on a pair of sunglasses any time he sees Bucky, to avoid any literal glares Bucky might throw at him.

Bucky is in charge of water. Initially, he offered to hunt, but when he set his hands on an AK-47, Sam had stopped him and said no guns, Sarge. His tone was tinted with fear, and Bucky bristled at it, although he couldn’t blame Sam: he _has_ tried to kill the man several times, so he complied grumpily and out of pure shame. But Steve and Sam had an honest to God argument about it later when they thought Bucky couldn’t hear them. Steve said Bucky wasn’t dangerous, no way. Sam made a frustrated noise, like Steve didn’t understand, and Steve wanted to talk to Bucky about it later, but Bucky was too busy avoiding the both of them. All in all water duty isn’t so bad, because it gives him a constant excuse to wander the jungle alone.

He can hear the river before he sees it. It’s low, humming rush. But then there’s a faint snapping sound and Bucky can feel eyes on him all of the sudden, from above. He’s a skilled predator himself; he knows when he’s prey.

He whirls around and looks up. What he sees in the tree surprises him, although it really shouldn’t.

“Hey, handsome,” Natasha says, faintly singsong. She looks down appraisingly and drops a mango.

He catches it. “You scared the hell outta me.”

“Aw, you’re sweet.”

So is the fruit. Bucky bites into it hungrily.

“How did you even get up there?” he asks.

“I have my ways,” she waves nonchalantly, just before jumping down and landing smoothly on her feet right in front of him.

“I was looking for eggs. Didn’t find any.”

“So I guess it’s mango and manioc for dinner again?”

“Is that a complaint?”

Bucky takes another bite of his mango, relishing it and shaking his head. “No ma’am.”

Her face is freckled with tiny dead gnats that drowned in the sweat of her brow. She wipes them away with the crook of her arm.

“You wanna take a detour from water duty?”

He’s in zero hurry to get back to camp. “Whatever you say, doll. Where we goin’?”

“You’ll see.”

 

 

The mouth of the cave is barely large enough to fit a human through, and mid-way through the crawl of the tunnel the whole plan starts suddenly feeling like a not-great idea. Maybe—

Bucky’s tumbles forward a little, Natasha flips on her lantern, and Bucky’s breath catches.

The cave is _huge_. The ceiling is higher than the one at the guesthouse, that’s for sure, and from it stalactites dangle like dirty icicles. The temperature must be about 20 degrees cooler than outside, a sweet relief, and not just for them: there are frogs and snails and moths enjoying the damp shelter too. There’s a tiny stream snaking through the place, it’s trickling sounds hovering lightly in the air, which is stale but not foul.

“Sooooo,” Bucky says, awestruck and a little breathless. “Got me all alone in here, huh? I can’t decide if you’re gonna try to kiss me or kill me.”

“Both used to be my specialty,” Natasha says.

Bucky crosses his arms, sizing her up as his eyes adjust to the dim light. He knows she was a first rate KGB spy and that’s about it. “Oh yeah?”

“Yes, but I don’t talk about all that.”

“Bet that drives Wilson nuts.”

“Oh, I count on it,” she says.

“So why _are_ we here?”

 _“Can you keep a secret?”_ she asks in Russian.

“ _Da_.”

“Wakanda is one of the only African nations to have never been colonized,” she explains.

Bucky just stares at her, blinking, eyes still adjusting. “Is that the secret? Because that’s not really a secret.”

“Follow me.”

He reaches out and runs his flesh hand along the rough rock walls as he tracks her movements deeper into the caverns, past what can only be described as the living room and into more cramped chambers beyond it. They meander through mazes of stalagmites and (in one particular spot) bat-droppings.

“Just about every other country on this continent has been enslaved by more powerful men at some point or another. Explorers have mined for rubber, gold, copper, oil, ivory, uranium, you name it. But this country—this _jungle_ —it’s untouched.”

Eventually she stops and crouches down by a pile of dirt and gravel that’s obviously been disturbed before. She roots around in it and pulls up a fistful. Standing back up, she opens her palm to him and shines a light on it.

“Holy cow,” he remarks, taken aback and craning closer.

He thought it was glass at first. But it’s a diamond the size of a bird’s egg, clear and pinkish. Bucky picks it hesitantly, worshipfully even, and holds it up close to his eye.

“Stunning, right?”

“I’ll say,” Bucky murmurs. He’s suddenly aware of how dirty and unshaven he is. Natasha grasps another fist full of dirt. There’s at least three more diamonds, but they’re much smaller.

“What are you gonna do with them?”

“Leave them be,” she says simply. He returns the jewel to her eventually, and she drops them all back into the earth after examining them wistfully again. Once she’s said her goodbyes, she shines her lantern on a mushroom growing on the side of the cave wall and grabs it.

“You sure that’s edible?” Bucky asks worriedly.

“Positive.” She eats half of it and offers him the rest. Bucky sniffs it suspiciously and sits down next to her on the floor. They’re side by side, backs up against the cool stone.

“I’ve spent some time in a jungle before,” she says offhandedly.

The way the light hits her makes it look like she’s about to tell a ghost story, but she doesn’t. Bucky nods and chews his mushroom. It tastes smoky and hearty and mostly like dirt, but he’s not complaining.

She hands him another one.

“We _should_ bring some of these back for our boys. But we could also keep them all to ourselves,” she says mischievously.

Bucky chuckles at that and it echoes all over the cave. “You’re a real six-and-twenty tootsie, you are. Trouble.”

“Sam wants me to get you to open up,” Natasha admits.

“Shocking.”

“He says we’ve got a lot in common. I’m not going to try to make you talk though. I just wanted you to know that. You don’t have to tell me a damn thing.”

Bucky lets out a sigh of relief that can be heard from Saturn, probably. “Romanoff, I think this is the beginning of a beautiful friendship.”

“Did you just quote _Casablanca_ at me?”

“It was the last picture I saw before shipping off to basic, what can I say. It stuck with me.”

She feigns outrage. “So you remember Humphrey Bogart but you don’t remember me? I see how it is.”

“What?”

“Never mind.”

They have an understanding, it seems.

“I never thought I’d say this in Wakanda,” she says, switching topics and crossing her arms over herself. “But I’m cold.”

Which makes sense: she’s wearing nothing but athletic shorts and a sports bra, very low cut.

“You know, back in my day, dressin’ like that was illegal.”

“Yeah. There were a lot of things that were against the law back in your day…things that shouldn’t have been.”

Her stare is piercing now; she’s got a sly little smile and one eyebrow quirked up. Bucky knows she’s got his number. She knows, of course she does, but she doesn’t push it any further, God bless her. This dame is something else, boy is she.

Bucky knocks his boot up against her sneaker. “So who else knows about this place?”

“Just us.”

“Why’d you show me?”

She gives him a significant look. “It’s like Sam said. We’re the same.”

“FUBAR’d?”

“Formerly occupied territory.”

 

They return to camp just before sunset with water _and_ mushrooms, because Bucky convinced Natasha to share. Sam plays fire-starter with the wood Steve’s gathered and by the time it’s dark, they’re bumps on a log, feeling something close to full, but not quite.

Sam unscrews a bottle of liquor he’d taken from the guesthouse and starts passing it around, which is The Signal. Time for a team meeting. Great.

“Well, we survived another day without a mamba bite,” Sam assesses. “I’d call that a success.”

“I’ll drink to that,” Natasha says, just before swiping the bottle from Sam and doing so.

“Snakes. Why’d it have to be snakes,” Sam quotes. Steve looks at him intensely for a moment, then snaps his fingers and points at him.

“ _Raiders of the Lost Ark_.”

“I’ve taught you well, man.”

Bucky doesn’t have a clue what they’re talking about.

“It’s a movie about Nazis with melted faces,” Natasha utters to him quietly. “Nothing you haven’t already seen, right?”

Bucky never thought he’d chortle at the thought of the Red Skull, but he does.

“Okay,” Sam says, down-to-business. “The most important item on the agenda: They caught Ayo, finally, although T’Challa said there’s zero trace of the Vibranium. She must’ve told somebody about us hiding out at the palace, because there’s some sort of government investigation over there. Ross is still on the warpath. Plus I think Steve busting us out hurt his ego.”

“Oops,” Steve shrugs, not even remotely sorry.

“Anyway, somebody out there must love us, because the CIA got a hot tip that we’d fled to the Argentina. Which sucks, because now we can’t go to Argentina. Argentina is amazing, man.”

Sam might be a little tipsy already. He takes another sip from the bottle.

“I don’t mind staying here,” he says. “But Clint’s new safehouse is in Montana. Might be an option.”

“No,” Steve says. “I won’t do that to Laura and the kids. Anywhere we go that involves hospitality puts our host at risk. We’re on our own.”

“He’s right,” Natasha says. “This is about as off the grid as we can get without actually leaving the _planet_. I vote we stay for now.”

“Barnes?” Sam asks.

“Fine by me.”

“Okay, then. Second most important item on the agenda: we’re running out of liquor. Next supply drop won’t be for a while.”

“I know how to make palm wine,” Natasha says. They all stare at her.

“Jane of the Jungle, over here,” Sam comments. “How the hell does a girl from Russia learn how to make palm wine? Don’t answer that. You’d probably have to kill me afterwards, right? But okay, that’s settled. Natasha is now on palm wine duty.”

“As if keeping you boys fed wasn’t a full time job as it is.”

“Next item on the agenda,” Sam starts, slurring a little, because their meal was meager and all the booze is going to his head. “We need a team name. Seeing as the Avengers booted us. How about Captain America and His Sweating Commandos?”

“I’m not Captain America anymore.”

Steve’s not sad when he says it. He’s not happy either. He’s mostly blank and vaguely bitter, like those jungle potatoes. None of them are sure how to proceed until his expression lightens and he speaks again. “How about The Falcon and His Fledglings?”

Sam snorts.

“Black Widow and Her Band of Merry Men,” Natasha tosses out, unable to keep a straight face.

“Black Widow and Her Band of Military Scrap Metal,” Steve corrects.

“That’s the fucking truth right there,” Sam states.

“Kind of a mouthful though,” Steve admits.

“I don’t know if there’s a name for what we are,” Natasha acknowledges. “Other than _homeless_.”

“Fine, we’ll table the name thing,” Sam says. “But before the meeting is over, I wanna check in with everybody.”

Bucky groans internally, because this is always the way these meetings end. Group therapy. It’s enough to make Bucky want to pick Wilson up and throw him into the goddamn latrine.

“I’ll go first,” Sam volunteers. “I’ve been feeling really anxious lately. I keep having this weird fear that I’ve forgotten to put bullets in my gun. I kept picturing it—some motherfucker is gonna sneak up on me out here and I’ll fire and…nothing. I check the chamber ten times a day. I know it’s full but I check it anyway. Drives me crazy. Okay, who’s next?”

Steve undertakes it, a little hesitantly. “The other day I got spooked by a noise. I don’t even know what it was. But I reached behind me to grab my _shield_. Dumb, right? It’s just strange not having it. Not saying I wish I had it. But it’s just…”

“Like phantom limb.” Sam says.

Steve shrugs. “I guess.”

Bucky wants to demand what the hell Sam knows about phantom limb, because fuck him, but he doesn’t say a word.

“Natasha?” Sam prompts.

Natasha clears her throat. “I, uh. I’ve been having some flashbacks lately. From when I was a girl. From the Red Room.”

Bucky’s eyes fly wide open like he’s just realized he left the stove on. He only visited the Red Room a few times and none of scenes there are concrete. Just a blur of images: _snow_ , grappling with girls who fought like robots, discussing combat patterns with their handlers afterward. They were lithe and lethal. Bucky vaguely remembers knowing they were on his side, so to speak. Natasha is like a long lost relative from a dysfunctional Soviet family.

“You wanna tell us about the flashbacks?” Sam asks her gingerly.

“No.”

He nods understandingly, maybe just happy to get anything out of her in the first place.

“Sarge? Anything you wanna talk about?”

The crickets are suddenly very loud.

“Nah,” Bucky says, looking at the ground.

 

 

Later, when the fire is merely embers, Natasha excuses herself for the night and makes her way to the cargo bay of the jet to sleep, dragging Sam with her.

There’s no way to see the stars through the trees, but Steve is sprawled out on his back in the grass, hands behind his head, looking up anyway, with Bucky right beside. Something about lying with him like this makes Bucky miss city noise, although jungle noise is just as busy, really: cicadas instead of sirens, owl hoots for car horns, the rush of water instead of alley chatter.

“Buck?” Steve whispers. It’s the same way he used to whisper _“Buck?”_ about a hundred years ago, when he couldn’t sleep from coughing, and they stayed up talking while his Ma worked the nightshift at the hospital.

“Yeah?”

“Do you remember City Park?”

“Course. We went there just about every day after school.”

Steve sighs, like he’s surprised, like it’s a relief. A balm. “Sometimes, I—” he starts and then falters.

He tries again. “Sometimes I worry none of it was real. Do you ever feel like you don’t know where you are? Or _when_ you are?”

“All the time,” Bucky admits.  

“Me too.”

“You feelin’ that way right now?”

“No. It never happens when I’m with you,” Steve confesses.

Steve un-tucks a hand from the back of his head and lets it fall in-between them. Then he’s trying it again: he holds Bucky’s hand. And this time, Bucky takes a deep breath and lets him. It’s not a declaration so much as Steve trying to tether himself to reality, as if without Bucky he would float up up and away and into the ether.

“Will you stay with me?” Steve asks, strained. Bucky usually keeps watch on top of the quinjet at night, away from the others.

Steve gently rubs his thumb over Bucky’s forefinger. For a split second it feels _wonderful_ ; comforting and warm and he never wants to let go—but then he remembers another time he held a man’s hand, in a very different context: Private Cole, belly blown wide open like a window from the shrapnel, pleading to be put out of his misery. Bucky’d gripped his trembling hand and said sorry over and over and pressed the barrel to Cole’s young forehead.

He was lying when he told Stark’s kid that he remembered _all_ of them, but does he remembers _most_ of them. Not just the two-dozen plus HYDRA made him kill. The United States of America was also a ruthless master, and his count under their command probably just as high, all things considered. And was a CO screaming orders really any different than a trigger word? Fall in line—ready to comply— _Zhelaniye._

Bucky gives Steve’s hand a squeeze before letting it go and hauling himself up.

“You should get inside. Might get picked off by a leopard down here. I’ll just be up on the jet, okay?”

“Okay,” Steve says hollowly.

 

 

The next day, it rains.

The day after, it _pours_ , deafening and torrential and Bucky can hardly _breathe_ , because they’re trapped inside the jet and the rain hitting the metal of the quinjet sounds like gunfire. Sam seems to be having the same problem. He winces at thunderclaps, like he wants to duck and cover but generally knows better.

“You doing okay today, Sarge?”

“Fine.”

“Anybody pack an umbrella?” Steve asks sardonically, looking out a window. There’s a flash of blinding light and another clap of thunder.

“I can still hunt in this,” Natasha insists. Steve gives her a warning look.

Don’t you dare. Because she probably really would try it. Instead she hops up and goes to the jet’s pantry, pulls out protein bars, and doles them out. Steve takes one and heads to the cockpit, assumedly to check the computer for any news from T’Challa.

“You fellas look terrible,” she says to Sam and Bucky, tossing them food.

There’s another booming clap of thunder. This time it’s Sam who pops up. “Music,” he says. “We need music.”

He plugs what they keep calling an eyepod into one of the jet’s many sockets. “Okay, Sarge. Your pick.”

“Huh?”

“What kind of music do you like?”

It’s like there’s an atrophied muscle inside of him twitching, trying to decide.

“Jazz,” Bucky finally says, like it’s news to himself.

“I’ve got just the thing,” Sam says. “Miles Davis, Blue in Green.”

He turns the sound up to make the storm less jarring, and somehow it works, somehow it all blends together: the thunder is a base drum and rain itself a sax riff.

Sam sashays up to Natasha, all hips, and holds his hand out to her in a wordless invitation to dance. She smiles at him and laughs but shakes her head no.

“My previous employment sort of ruined dancing for me.”

“Fair enough,” he remarks.

Steve returns from the cockpit with a worried sort of look on his face and grabs the palm wine, which means—

“Team meeting,” he announces.

Palm wine is sour as hell and so is the news: Wakandan special forces found the Vibranium in the possession of a wealthy American investor, along with architectural plans for another super max prison and a border wall, and several illegally detained (and severely malnourished) Mutants. It’s all under federal investigation now.

 

 

“It’s not any different from what Ross wants to do,” Steve says. “He’d love nothing more than to lock up every enhanced person—until they’re useful to him.”

“How do we know Ross _isn’t_ involved?” Sam asks.

Natasha chews her lip. “If they find out he is, it could be good for us.”

Sam’s eyebrows threaten to merge with his hairline and she clarifies. “Public sympathy. If the Accords get lumped in with Mutant abuse and discrimination…they start looking like a human rights violation.”

“They _are_ a human rights violation,” Steve says emphatically.

“The Raft was definitely a human rights violation,” Sam agrees vigorously at the memory of it. “That was some Gitmo shit right there. Ross looked _happy_ to see us too. He’s shady as hell. That whole bit about us _signing_ the Accords? What the hell was that even about? It was a joke. International laws are international laws, whether we sign them or not. He just wanted to see who he could keep in his pocket and who he needed to target. He sold the whole idea to the UN under the guise of minimizing collateral damage. But it was all about control. He’s shady as shit. How the fuck did he get all those countries to agree with him so fast to begin with? Shady shit.”

“Okay, next order of business,” Sam switches. “This rain. I can’t exactly boil water in the rain. We’ve got some purification tablets…”

“I’ll risk the amoebas,” Bucky offers. “Chances are my body will kill them anyway. Steve’s too.”

“Excellent point, Sarge. No wasting tablets on the super soldiers. Alright, I wanna check in with everybody real quick.”

Bucky groans audibly this time, and has to resist ripping off his boot and hurling it at Sam’s never-still mouth.

 

 

After a solid week of storming, Natasha smacks her own forehead like she forgot something vital, and then looks sick.

“It’s October, isn’t it?”

“Yeah,” Sam confirms.

“This is the rainy season. Well, one of them. It’s going to rain for about a month, maybe two.”

Steve immediately starts counting out rations. “You okay?” he asks Natasha, who is clearly still troubled.

“I _need_ to hunt,” she says, looking a little lost.

 

 

“You doing okay today, Sarge?”

“Fine.”

 

 

 

“How’re you feeling today?”

“Jesus, do you ever _stop_?”

 

 

 

 

“I don’t wanna talk about that.”

 

 

 

 

“Buck?” Steve whispers, trying not to wake Natasha and Sam, who are inches away. Everyone is too close, on the floor of the cargo bay in sleeping bags.

“Yeah?”

“You remember that time we babysat your brothers and they locked us out of the apartment?”

“...No.”

“The stove was on. They almost burned the building down.”

“Those little shits.”

“You don’t remember it?”

“...No.”

He’s trying his best to forget everything these days.

“Buck?”

“Hmmm?” Bucky grunts groggily.

“Did you really hide in the Smithsonian for two months?”

“Yeah.”

“ _How_?”

“It was easy. I cut a few cameras. I stole candy from the gift shop after hours. I kinda needed to figure out what the hell had happened in the world since I’d been in the freezer. Museum’s not a bad place to do it.”

“But you knew who I was, right?”

“Yes.”

“So _why_ did you hide from me?”

“You woulda done the same damn thing if you’d been in my shoes and I won’t hear otherwise,” Bucky snaps. “Go the fuck to sleep, Steve.”

He doesn’t argue, maybe for the first time in his life. “Sorry.”

“It’s fine. It’s fine. Just go to sleep.”

“I’m so sorry,” he repeats.

“I’m so sorry, Buck,” he just keeps whispering, and Bucky realizes he’s apologizing for a whole lot more than keeping him awake. “I’m so sorry.”

It’s dark as pitch, but Bucky knows that Steve’s started crying in that stifled and completely silent way that he does, and this time it’s Bucky who reaches out and knits their hands together, even though it hurts.

 

 

_The grass at City Park is soft and cool and Bucky is sprawled out on his belly in it next to Steve. He has a National Geographic magazine open to page 16, same as his age, but Steve is stuck doing homework, a little behind from his most recent bout of pneumonia._

_There’s a report due on a US President of Steve’s choosing, and he picked James Buchanan, because that’s Bucky’s name too, and also because most everybody else picked Washington or Lincoln, and Steve just had to be contrarian, or maybe he thought the 15_ _th_ _president of the United States was feeling left out._

_He leafs through a biography from the library, scanning for interesting patriotic details to write down, but he doesn’t find many, and looks a little bored quite frankly._

_“Hate to break it to you, but you share a name with a lousy president.”_

_Bucky smacks the back of Steve’s head for that one, and Steve rubs it thoughtfully as he examines a paragraph that seems to have finally caught his attention._

_“Huh. He never got married.”_

_“So what?”_

_“Well, all the other presidents got married, didn’t they? But he never did._ _It says he lived with his best friend. Fella named William. It’s just interesting, that’s all.”_

_Steve doggy ears the page like it matters and Bucky isn’t sure what to say to that, so he just goes back to his National Geographic and tries not to dwell on it._

_A few more pages and he spots an article about the Aurora Borealis._

_“Hey, look at this,” he says to Steve, shoving the magazine over. The photo is black and white, and not all that impressive, so Steve doesn’t really see the big deal at first. But he reads the description and is suddenly intrigued._

_“I bet if we took a train to Canada we could see it,” Steve says, already launching into a plot for adventure, as if money and time (and his health) were no hindrance. They did this sometimes, created and imagined plans just for the sake of it, but Bucky got the sense that Steve would actually go through with them if Bucky would only let him._

_“Says the best place to see it is in the Alaska Territory,” Bucky informs, pointing to a line in the article, running with their little game._

_“Do they got Polar Bears in the Alaska Territory?”_

_“I guess we’ll find out when we get there,” Bucky jokes._

_“Hey, I’m serious. We’ll go someday.”_

_Bucky rolls his eyes. “Better start saving now, Pal. Maybe in 20 years we’ll have the money.”_

_“Can I have this for a sec? Let’s switch.”_

_“Thought you had an assignment due,” Bucky reminds him._

_“I’ll get to it, I_ swear _,” Steve groans. He shuffles through his bag and pulls out his sketchbook and color pencils, and Bucky knows that determined look. When Steve gets the urge to draw there’s no stopping him._

_“Fine,” Bucky obliges, taking the Buchanan biography reluctantly. For the next hour he reads about the Kansas-Nebraska Act, and about how yes, Buchanan never got married, and some people called his friend William King his “better half”; and then there was the Utah War with the Mormons of all people. Finally Steve has a full color sketch of the Northern Lights laid out in front of them, a whole tundra landscape included, but some of the details seem wrong to Bucky._

_“It’s great, Stevie,” he says anyway._

_But Steve’s suspicious. “What?”_

_“Nothing—colors look real good.”_

_“...but?”_

_“Flowers, really?”_

_Steve shoves the magazine back in his face and points to a line. Draba Fladnizensis, a plant known commonly as Arctic Draba._

_“Oh,” Bucky concedes. “Didn’t think they could survive a place that cold.”_

_“Me either. Anyway, you can have this,” Steve says, offering him the sketch._

_“Thanks, Pal. I’ll try to keep Rebecca from eating it.”_

_His sister, his Ma’s miracle baby, is three._

_Bucky looks down at the drawing and beams admiringly, but then it turns into a draft notice right in front of his eyes and Steve disappears._

_Basic Training is almost over, or so Bucky thinks, but then a high ranking officer walks into the mess hall and Bucky’s spine goes ramrod straight like he’s been caught being a bunk lizard._

_The officer pulls him into a dim office and asks him to stay on for specialized training._

_“With your aim and a little more preparation,” the officer says almost fondly, “You’ll be a valuable resource. Plus the money is better.”_

_And Bucky says yes, because promotions and sharp-shooting mean you tend to die less often than the lowest of the infantry, and he wants to make it back home someday._

_He should’ve said no why didn’t he—_

_And then Karpov is standing over him._

_The other Winter Soldiers use him as a punching bag. He’s their training exercise. They each take their turn. He’s down on the ground again with a broken nose and cracked ribs and blood coming out of his ear._

_Alexander Pierce drags him up and is asking for a mission report. Which mission? Pierce slaps him._

_“Target eliminated,” Bucky says blankly. “No witnesses left alive.” No witnesses._

_“Mission report,” Pierce demands again. Bucky doesn’t know what to say. There have been so many missions. Where are they? He’s bound and hooked up to the machine in the vault, but he’s also in Siberia. There’s blood in the snow. He has no left arm. He’s on the table and Zola is sticking him with needles._

Zhelaniye.

 _Bucky screams. He’s a soldier. He’s the Soldier and the war just goes on and on. He’s strangling Howard’s wife. She cries out, “Buck, stop!” but he just squeezes his hands tighter around her throat. Her face changes._ A light snaps on. Steve is turning white under his hands and he’s not fighting back.

Natasha has a gun pointed at Bucky’s head, which she quickly lowers when Bucky backs away from Steve in abject horror, sweat-drenched and shaking. Sam attends to Steve without looking in Bucky’s direction.

“It was a nightmare, Sarge,” he says, unable to make eye contact. Steve gasps and gasps and Bucky feels each sound like a stab.  

“I’m—okay—Buck,” Steve assures breathlessly between coughs, rubbing his neck. “It’s—okay. It—it wasn’t you. Are you alright?”

And that’s the last straw. Bucky yanks his shoes on and flies out the door of the quinjet into the rain.

He’s halfway past camp when he hears splashing behind him and sees the beam of a flashlight cutting through the night.

“Go back, Steve,” Bucky orders without even turning around.

“Where are you going?” Steve demands, voice thin and raspy from the previous stress on his throat. He reaches out to clutch Bucky’s arm. Bucky whirls around and shoves his grasp off roughly.

“I SAID GO BACK.”

Steve might be 230 pounds of pure muscle, but right now his face is that of a scrawny 4F, scared to death of being separated from Bucky by the war. “I’ll go with you,” he says desperately. “Wherever it is.”

“I know you wanna pretend like I’m still that kid from the city, and I’ve let you play that game, but I’m not him anymore. You gotta get that through your stubborn skull.”

“What HYDRA did—that’s not _you_ —”

“It _was_ me.” Bucky snarls furiously, because Steve just doesn’t get it. “It doesn’t matter who made me do it. I still _did it_.”

“You really think you’re any worse than me?”

Bucky turns on a dime and starts walking away at that, but he still hears splashes behind him. He wildly tries to think of something that will keep Steve from following him, and to his surprise the truth is what does the trick:

“You make it harder,” he says, turning back around to face him again. His voice sounds as choked and injured as Steve’s. “Do you get that? You make things harder for me.”

As he marches away, he can hear Steve call something out, but the details of it are indistinguishable over the din of the downpour. The trail is soup. It sloshes with every heavy footstep. Soaked to the bone and flashlight-less, he crawls into the cave and collapses.

He shakes. He doesn’t cry, just shakes, because he was the best goddamn sniper in the US Army and he held himself so steady, so still.

But it’s all slamming back into him now. He’s got about a half a century’s worth of shakes stored up.

 

 

When they find him in the cave later, his first thought is that Natasha really is a double agent. изменник. She sold him out.

They bug him about coming back to camp, so kind and sympathetic, until he yells at them, loud as the thunder, to leave him the fuck alone. Steve’s neck is purple and blue from all bruises. Later there is a pile of mangos and protein bars at the mouth of the cave like an offering to some useless god. He lets the animals have it all, and wonders how it’s possible for him to eat absolutely nothing and feel heavier and heavier each day.

The funny thing is, he thought he was getting better. Back at the palace. Back during those first few weeks in the jungle. He’d thought maybe he was getting better. But now he’s getting worse.

What little hope he’s gathered crumbles like a cliff into the sea. The flashes and dreams are relentless, as if sprung from a dam. Only now does he understand the real reason Sam had refused to give him a gun.

 

 

“How long is this quarantine gonna last?” Steve asks one day, pained and concerned as can be, from the mouth of the cave.

Bucky remembers when Steve’s Ma got sent off to a TB sanatorium. Steve had remained optimistic until the very last letter.

“You shoulda let Stark’s kid put me outta my misery, you selfish son of a bitch.”

“ _Bucky_ …”

“Go away. _Please.”_

 

 

 

He goes as long as he can without water before his body betrays him and he’s crawling dizzily on his hands and knees to the thin stream that trickles through the cave and sticking his face in it, every frenzied gulp a failure.

 

 

 

This time when a spider scuttles across the floor, he squashes it. Quick and easy.

 

 

 

_He and Jones smelled it first. Jesus, that smell, it could burn your nostrils, make you vomit on the spot. They found a mass grave, a pile of bodies in a ditch, but this time around they’re all the people he—he remembers most of them—_

He jerks awake.

  

 

 

 

“I saw the weirdest thing the other day,” Sam says, holding a lantern that makes Bucky squint. “It was a bird holding a protein bar in its beak.”

“Sure you weren’t just lookin’ in a mirror?” Bucky retorts groggily.

“You’re a funny guy,” Sam laughs. It echoes all over and makes Bucky want to punch him.

“You know what I think,” Bucky sneers.

“What’s that, Sarge?”

“I think you’re full of shit.”

“By all means, man, explain.” Sam really does look interested, sitting down across from him on the floor of the cave and listening intently. He’s wearing a tarp like a poncho and it pools around him.

“You’re always yammering on about how people need to open up, right? You’re always talking. But you know what I noticed? You don’t actually say anything. I don’t know a damn thing about you, other than your wingman snuffed it and you follow Steve around like a brownnosing guard dog. You’re full of shit. You really expect me to cry on your shoulder? Get the fuck out. Get the fuck out before I make you, you—”

“Yeah, you’re right.”

And that shuts Bucky right up.

“You’re right,” Sam repeats. “Opening up doesn’t come naturally to me. I had to work at it. I had to work really hard.”

“You picked a hell of a profession, then,” Bucky jeers.

“You wanna know why?”

“You’re gonna tell me anyway, aren’t you? And this is gonna be our big bonding moment, right? Is that how this works?”

“You know why I joined the military?”

“Let me guess. To make a difference in the world,” he snarls.

“Hardly. I just wanted to be cool. I wanted to be macho. Growing up, I was the dude calling other dudes “pussy” and “fag” and telling everybody to grow a pair. I probably would’ve been the guy harassing Steve at school, back when he was small. I probably would’ve tried to stuff him into a locker.”

He says it all easily, genuinely, like he used to be ashamed of it but isn’t anymore.

“My dad walked out when I was 10,” he continues evenly. “He left on Christmas. Christmas fucking Day, man. The last I ever saw of him was his car pulling out into the snow. It wrecked my mom. But I wasn’t allowed to be sad. I wasn’t allowed to cry about. I had to be the strong one. So I hated weak people. I hated weakness. I joined the military because that’s what real men do.

“My wingman, Riley, he—,” he falters, voice tight. “He did a tour before me. It fucked him up. He was seeing things and hearing things and I didn’t do a damn thing about it. You know what I said to him? I said, 'Suck it up, Buttercup.' We laughed about it. We joked. I told him he’d get over it.

“The night he died, he was bad off. He was going through some shit in his head, and I let him get in the air. He was distracted. I didn’t understand. I didn’t understand how bad it was until I saw him blow up right in front of my face.

“It turned my world upside down. So now I do what I do. I know you hate it when I when I pry, but I’d much rather piss you off and have you hate me than risk another soldier dying on my watch. Because one way or another, the shit we keep locked up inside kills us. I don’t wanna see that happen to you. I’ve seen it happen too many times.

“A story is for the telling, Sarge. And look—I know you’re in the thick of it right now. When I first got out, I couldn’t leave the house for months. Hell, I only did two tours. You’ve done about a thousand. But a story is for the telling. When you’re ready, I’d like to hear some of yours.”

He stands back up. “Steve is a mess. I don't think I’ve never seen a dude with separation anxiety this bad. He might just rip up this entire jungle while he waits for you to come out. But I’m not going to ask you to leave this place. Not yet. All I’m going to ask is that you take care of yourself a little more.”

He tosses him a sleeping bag and a backpack from his shoulder. “There’s food, Gatorade, soap. A toothbrush. You can lie down and wish for death all you want, but I need you to use those things. Every day. Can you do that for me?”

“Guess so.”

“I’m gonna hold you to that. If I come back and you smell as bad as you do right now, you’re in trouble.”

“Sir yes sir,” Bucky says blankly.

“Good man,” Sam says.

“Far fucking from.”

“Not as far as you think.”

“Don’t push it, Wilson.”

He leaves the lantern when he goes.

Bucky unzips the damp threadbare backpack to examine the contents. It’s just as Sam said, but with a few extra items, including a deck of cards and a very worn looking book.

And there’s a sketch. It’s not of Coney Island or City Park or that fucking freezer truck. It’s of the river, wild and overflowing from all the rain.

Here and now.

 

*

 

Sam returns to bring him more food and to sniff at him and they sit there in silence for over an hour. Bucky’s not sure if it’s a game of chicken or what.

 

*

The book is about the history of the Congo, Wakanda’s western neighbor, of all things, and its Belgian occupation, and how King Leopold II forced the Congolese into rubber making plants and cut off their hands and arms when they didn’t make their quotas. All in all not a happy tale so far, and he’s not sure why they gave him the book at all, or whose it was in the first place, although he has his suspicions.

She’d said she’d spent time in a jungle before.

 

*

“Go fish,” Bucky says, after about the 12th time he’s sat in silence with Sam and can’t take it anymore.

“What, literally?”

He holds up the deck of cards and shrugs.

 

*

The Congo won independence from Belgium in 1960, and selected a man named Patrice Lumumba as their first Prime Minister in their very first democratic election. He was a man of the people: a former beer salesman, a poet, staunchly anti-colonialist. African. The Congo belonged to the Congo.

In 1961 Lumumba was murdered, they don’t know who exactly did it. But the US and the USSR were covertly fighting over uranium in the area, and apparently President Eisenhower had had enough.

Bucky slams the book down.

 

*

“You got any 8s?”

“Go fish.”

 

*

Bucky reads and re-reads one of Lumumba’s speeches, because it’s the only book he’s got, and because—

 _“No Congolese worthy of the name will ever be able to forget that it was by fighting that it [independence] has been won, a day-to-day fight, an ardent and idealistic fight, a fight in which we were spared neither privation nor suffering, and for which we gave our strength and our blood. We are proud of this struggle, of tears, of fire, and of blood, to the depths of our being, for it was a noble and just struggle, and indispensable to put an end to the humiliating slavery which was imposed upon us by force._ _”_

 

*

“How you doing today, Sarge?”

“I’m,” Bucky swallows. “I’m sad.”

 

*

Sam brings him more food and pillows and fresh clothes and this time there’s another sketch: a treehouse in the jungle, just like in _Swiss Family Robinson_ , which he and Steve used to play on the fire escape. Except the treehouse is in _this_ jungle, not imaginary, not Brooklyn. This place.

 

*

“How bad is it today, Sarge?” 

“I miss Steve.” It’s a physical ache.

“I can go get him,” Sam offers.

“No. No, _I can’t_ —”

Sam puts down his cards.

“I was married once too,” Sam says. Bucky bristles for a second at the insinuation but then doesn’t even have the strength to deny anything. Not anymore. He’s too tired. To hell with it.

“What happened to her?” Bucky questions.

“I messed it up. Being a military wife isn’t for everybody,” he says simply. “It lasted three years. She still sends birthday cards.”

“Sorry.”

“It’s okay. I only bring that up because…well, like I said. I was married once too.”

“When did you figure it out?” Bucky asks, and Sam knows exactly what he’s talking about.

“About the time he pulled a motherfucking helicopter out of the sky for you.”

Bucky huffs a laugh. It’s hard to make eye contact though.

“I think the more important question is when did _you_ figure it out?”

“Hell if I know. Been there since before we knew what it was. It’s not something that got discussed back then. At least not in the circles we ran in. If you had thoughts like that, you hushed up and hoped to God they went away.”

“That’s a tough way to live, man.”

“It’s a good way not to die though.”

They stop playing completely. Sam's just listening. 

“I thought about telling him sometimes," Bucky admits. "But then a guy at the docks disappeared.”

“Is that where you worked?”

“No. Just a place I went at night every now and then.”

Sam’s eyebrows ask the question.

“It’s exactly what it sounds like,” Bucky confirms. “Anyway. This guy disappeared. We all knew what happened to him. I got scared. I was terrified. Never went back there.”

Sam nods, encouraging him to keep talking.

“I promised Steve's Ma I’d look after him, ya know? That was always my job. First fight I ever got into was sticking up for him. Well, it was actually all because of a kid named Clarence.”

Bucky stalls, unable to elaborate.

“A story’s for the telling, Sarge. I’d like to hear this one.”

He takes a deep breath. “So this kid Clarence has a bad lisp and was barely bigger than Steve if you can believe it, and a couple of punks had Clarence cornered on the schoolyard. I usually tried to keep out of people’s business back then, but then I saw Stevie Rogers flying towards them in a flash. Steve was gonna take ‘em all on to save Clarence. So I had to jump in, because God. What kind of coward would I have been? If Steve’s scrawny ass was willing to go to bat, what kind of asshole was I? But then Clarence got away anyway, and they were just going in on Steve, so I broke that up and we all got sent to the principal’s office.”

“So Steve got bullied a lot, huh? What about you?”

“Nah.”

“So you were popular?”

“Guilty as charged.”

“Hey, no judgment. You’re talking to a former prom king,” Sam says.

“They called me a charmer. If you can believe it. But it was all just a game everybody was playing. Everybody except Steve.” His face splits into smile. “He didn’t give a damn about what anybody thought. I can’t even look at him sometimes. It’s like…Christ, it’s like staring at the Sun. Fire that bright _burns_. He thinks we’re the same but we’re not. We’ve never been the same.”

“What do you mean?”

“He’s always been yammering on about some cause or another, even when we were teenagers. He’d come home with _leaflets_ , ranting about _unions_ and _scabs_.”

“So you didn’t have any causes?”

Bucky takes a bite of protein bar. He’s put some weight back on. “My main cause was making sure we didn’t starve.”

 

*

“They made me think I was doing the right thing. They fried my brains and then they fed me all this shit about saving the world and my aim being a gift to mankind. I should’ve known better. I should’ve been able to fight it off. But even when I’d come out of it a little, I still fell for it. Because the Soviets were our allies in the war, you know? I thought…Jesus, I really believed I was doing the right thing.”

“That’s what I thought when we invaded Iraq,” Sam says. “And I didn’t even have trigger words.”

 

*

“Sarge, _breathe_.”

“I hear them in my head all the fucking time. All the fucking time. I try not to think about them and all it does is make me think about them.”

He’s hyperventilating.

“Which word are you hearing right now.”

“ _Rassvet,”_ Bucky chokes out.

“Sarge, look at me. Hey. Look at me. What’s that word mean in English?”

“Daybreak.”

“Okay, try something for me. Think of a something good that reminds you of daybreak. Hey—look at me. What’s something good that happens at daybreak?”

Bucky sucks tight, shallow breaths and madly tries to think.

“My little sister,” he pants. “When she was a baby. She used to come poke me in the eye to wake me up. She always wanted to play.”

“Good, good. Keep going.”

“But mostly I’d just hold her and she’d fall back to sleep on me. She used to twitch in her sleep.”

His breath slows a little. “She used to giggle in her sleep.”

“Okay, Sarge? Try something for me. I want you to say that word again, but think of her this time. Just focus on baby sister poking you in the damn eyeball.”

“ _Rassvet.”_

 

*

Once the crying finally starts, it doesn’t stop for a while. And when he gets to the part in the book about Congolese child soldiers, about how some of them get withdrawal symptoms after being rescued, how some of them get headaches because they miss the sight of blood, he doesn’t just cry. He _wails_ , guttural and animal-like, curled into the fetal position, hearing his own weeping as if from outside of himself. He cries for himself, but mostly he sobs because he realizes that as bad as he had it, others had it worse, and it just seems unfathomable. Out of all the people, in all of human history, who have been oppressed and enslaved and experimented on by Nazis and hijacked and tortured, he’s really rather lucky. He’s one of the lucky ones.

 

*

“It’s gotta be close to 50,” he says, emptied of all emotion and inflection; hollowed out. “At least. I remember most of it now.”

Sam nods. No judgment.

“I liked it sometimes. I hated it. I hated it. But I liked it sometimes. I was good at it.”

Sam nods. No judgment.

“Do you think God will ever forgive me for the things I’ve done?”

“Depends, I guess. Which God are we talking about?” Sam asks.

“The real one. Whichever one that is.”

“There’s this Scripture verse I like,” Sam says. “From the book of Isaiah, I think. It goes something like, “ _He will turn their swords into plows and their spears into pruning hooks. Nations will not take up the sword against other nations, and they will never again train for war.”_ I like that idea. That God can turn weapons into farming equipment. You know, tools that help grow things, that bring life. I like that. But it takes time, right? Plus you gotta get melted down first. That part sucks.”

 

*

“That word means furnace,” Bucky explains calmly.

“You got a good furnace story?”

“You know about how Steve busted me out of a prison camp in ’43, right?”

“I did a report on it in 7th grade.”

“What, really? Shit, that’s _weird_. Anyway, I don’t know if they mention this in the history books, but that whole place was on fucking fire. _That_ was a furnace, boyo. We got into a bind because the bridge fell after I was across. So Steve’s being an idiot and telling me to make a run for it, as if I’m gonna leave him to get cooked. I tell him I’m not going anywhere, so he gets the brilliant idea to jump the gap. Thought we were goners. But then I see that asshole’s face flying at me through the smoke and _smack_. He knocks me right over. I thought I was going to die of shock. Still can’t believe he made it. And I know what you’re thinking—he’s Captain America, of course he made it—but to me, he wasn’t. The last time I’d seen Steve he’d still needed my help reaching a book from the top shelf—not that he’d ask. But he made that jump. Shit, I was so proud. I was so goddamn proud of him. It’s a good memory.  _Pech_.”

 

*

The Congo went through about a bazillion different names over the years, and about as many uprisings, and there’s no telling when it will ever let up, from what the book says, but maybe it’s wrong. There’s a plenty of life rising from the ashes. Like this doctor named Mukwege who treated 40,000 rape victims in his lifetime. He started a whole international foundation and everything. Somebody tried to kill him and his family, but they lived, and they say he might get a Nobel Peace Prize someday.

 

*

_“Deyyat.”_

“In English, por favor.”

“Nine.”

“Anything good happen when you were nine?”

Bucky thinks hard for a moment and does some math. “ _Winnie the Pooh.”_

“What?”

“We got a book for Christmas. _Winnie the Pooh._ It was an _event_ , that book. I must’ve read it to my brothers a thousand times. This was before TV shows, you know? Steve and I would do the voices for them, kind of like a play. I always made Steve be Pooh, just to piss him off. It was a riot. _‘Pooh, promise you won't forget about me, ever. Not even when I'm a hundred.'_ I remember that part. 

 

 

*

“You know what would be fun?” Sam asks one day. 

Bucky shuffles. “A lobotomy.”

_“Poker.”_

“With just two players?” Bucky asks incredulously.

Sam quirks up an eyebrow. “Just think about it. Oh, and here—” he takes a folded piece of paper out of his pocket, “Steve wanted me to give you this.”

“So I guess you’re not The Falcon anymore.”

“Huh?”

“They can call you The Carrier Pigeon.”

Sam manages to glower and laugh at the same time and then he throws the cards in Bucky’s face. “52 pickup! There’s a game we haven’t played….Carrier Pigeon. Pfffft. Caw, caw, motherfucker.”

 

*

He expects it to be a sketch, because the paper is ripped from Steve’s sketchbook. But it’s not.

_Bucky,_

_At first I was planning on drawing you something. Sam jokes that I either punch or draw to communicate my emotions. He’s been helping me sort through some issues. He’s always “encouraging” me to write letters if I can’t speak my piece out loud, and it’s worked out decently in the past, so I thought I’d give it a go again now._

_Mainly, I want to apologize if I put too much pressure on you or overwhelmed you. I’ve been doing a lot of thinking about it and maybe I’ve needed you to still be that kid from the city because_ _I_ _need to still be that kid from the city. But the truth is we’ve both changed. A person can’t go through hell and not change. War changes everything._

_When I told you that you’re no worse than me, this is what I meant: After the ice, I was working for HYDRA, but I didn’t even realize it. I killed for them too. I followed orders. And before that I was a propaganda tool. You know how many men enlisted and died because of my comic books? I don't know the number but the idea of it haunts me anyway. Apparently, Paul Tibbets Jr. was a huge fan of my movies too. Good vs. Evil. I made it all look so simple. He dropped a bomb that killed 60,000 people in Japan. You still think your death toll is unforgivable? I know I’ve done some good too, but at the end of the day I’m not so sure how my scale tips._

_I fought to get into the army over and over again partly because I couldn’t stand the thought of being away from you, and mostly because I wanted to make a difference in the world. They preyed on that. They made me a dancing monkey, then they made me their prized weapon, and then they hunted me. So don’t think for a second that I regret dropping my shield for you. You’ve suffered so much more, but you’re no guiltier. We’ve all done terrible things. You, me, Sam, and Nat. They chewed us up and spit us out and all we have left is each other. It feels damn impossible to know what to do or who to be without a war, but I’m willing to figure it out together. I don’t belong to America anymore, but I still belong to you—that’s something even hell can’t change._

_I’ve loved you my whole life, Bucky. I've been in love with you for about that long too. I should’ve told you that part a long time ago, but I was afraid I’d run you off. I could never quite understand why you kept me around in the first place. You used to say I was fearless, but it’s not true. Never was. I’ve always been scared to death of losing you. Even now. Especially now. Maybe it’s selfish of me to put this on you, given the circumstances. I don’t know. I’ve been going out of my mind with it for so long I can’t even think straight these days. I don’t expect you to be able to talk about it anytime soon, but I will wait as long as it takes._

_Yours,_

_Steve_

 

 

 

 

When the rains subside the jungle bursts to life with color and smell so potent and pungently sweet it makes Bucky dizzy as he walks to the river to bathe. The trail is all puddles and war-painted tree frogs and plants reaching for the sun.  

At the river’s edge Bucky peels his clothing off, but not before checking for any predatory animal life, crocodiles in particular. When he’s sure the coast is clear, he submerges, and is once against surprised by how cold the water can be for a place so damn hot. He stands back up out of it, feeling the drops roll down him, each one catching the sunlight.

His bar of ivory soap is getting thin, so he just washes the necessities and hops out quickly. With a scrubbed face and fresh t-shirt he feels something close to clean. His hair is getting too long, so he throws it up into a wet bun first thing after shaking it out, but then he gets an idea.

“I don’t know how to cut white people’s hair,” Sam warns when they're back in the cave, touching Bucky’s matted mess like it might be full of bees.

“Just do it. Hack it off. Well, maybe leave a few inches.”

Sam lets him borrow a mirror and a razor too, and by the time they’re done he looks…he looks like himself, whatever the hell that means. Sam was right - he doesn’t know how to cut white hair. But it’ll do. It’s not military grade short, nor is it shaggy. Something in between. He can see his own ears for once. He scrubs a hand over his face. Stubble free.

He’s younger and older all at the same time. He’s got one foot in the Winter Soldier’s boots, and the other foot is bare and burnt, hanging off a pier at Rockaway Beach, and he lives in the jungle today.

“Lookin’ smooth, Sarge.”

“You think?”

“Sure thing. What’s the occasion?”

Bucky chews his lip. “Will you tell Steve I wanna see him?”

“You’re ready for that?”

“Yeah,” Bucky decides. “I am.”

 

 

Steve emerges through the tunnel that evening with dirt on the knees of his jeans and a hesitant smile on his now bearded face. Bucky’s never seen him with facial hair before - Steve couldn’t much grow it before the serum, and military life didn’t allow for it. It’s short and well-trimmed, but it still makes him look rougher, _wilder_ , and it suits him. Steve was never as clean cut as people liked to believe.  

He’s carrying more supplies for Bucky: blankets, fruit, fire-roasted caterpillars, plus plenty of palm wine and extra lanterns. He sets it all down gingerly, like he’s worried any sudden movements will scare Bucky off, and surveys the place appraisingly. He’s never been allowed all the way in here before.

“Nice pla-” he starts.

But there’s an impossibly loud whooshing noise and Steve looks around wildly as bats fly overhead.

“Oh, don’t mind that,” Bucky apologizes, ducking at the mass exodus nonchalantly. “Just my roommates stepping out for the evening.”

Steve laughs surprisedly but quickly stops himself. Is he supposed to laugh? Bucky’s never seen him so skittish. When the rustling of wings finally finishes, they’re both standing there in silence, unsure, eyes locked on each other.

Bucky studies Steve’s face and inexplicably thinks of that first knuckle-busting punch he threw for him, and how he followed it with an entire career of Steve-saving, fighting off bullies and Nazis and HYDRA goons and Tony Stark and it occurs to him that the person he’s fought off the longest is himself, and he just can’t do it anymore.

“C’mere,” Bucky beckons, pulling him into a bear hug, because they haven’t seen each other in over a month, maybe a year for what it feels like. The embrace changes slowly, from sloppy and puppy-like to intimate. They tip their foreheads together and Bucky feels Steve’s heart rate quicken against his chest. Bucky leans in, about to--

Steve pulls back and his wide eyes search Bucky’s, as if he can’t believe this is actually happening.

“What, did you want me to write a letter back first?” Bucky asks. He has no idea what he’s doing or if he’s ready for this and he doesn’t care. All he wants is Steve. All he’s ever really wanted is Steve.

Steve takes Bucky’s face in his hands, serious. “Just give me the short version.”

Bucky offers him a trembling smile. “I love you too, you idiot.”

Steve kisses him gently and slowly at first but then it turns to fire. It’s a first kiss for them, but somehow it’s not. It’s strange for it to feel so fresh yet so familiar. They’ve never done this before, yet they have. They’ve done this a _thousand times_ before: in daydreams and wet dreams and fever dreams. This is a fantasy come to life. Bucky's not sure how long the kiss lasts. Time has gone sideways.

“ _Bucky_ ,” Steve breaks off. "Can I...Can I stay here tonight?”

"I'm still a little worried about you sleeping next to me..."

“Who said anything about sleepin’?”

"Easy there, Rogers," Bucky teases, rocking his forehead back into Steve's. 

"No, I don't mean-" Steve backpedals, blushing a little. "Well, maybe-I don't even know h-oh God." 

"I think we've got a lot to talk about," Bucky says. 

"Yes," Steve agrees, before stealing one more kiss.  

 

 

They talk until it's very late, about anything and everything: war, sex, the past, the future. And then they sleep a little. And then when they wake up in the middle of the night they start kissing again, but this time it's different, because they talked about anything and everything. Steve had told Bucky earlier that there was no rush to getting physical, that it wasn't the point and he was pretty nervous himself, and Bucky had felt relief at that, since touch was still a scary prospect. Bucky said it might take a while. But then they woke up in the middle of the night and started kissing again. 

With the help of hands and mouths, they come as many times as their bodies will allow, which thanks to the serum is over and over and over again. And when Bucky gets overwhelmed—by touch itself, by memory, by emotion—they stop. And they wait, and then start all over, real slow.

There used to be a cycle: Wake, chair, trigger words. Then there were photographs and locations. He was HYDRA’s hunting dog. They waved a scent in front of his nose until his mouth foamed white and they released him, leash from collar. After the killing ended, it was back in the chair, good boy. Then back in the freezer. No time to lick your wounds, goodnight.

Repeat.

But when he wakes on this particular morning there’s no chair at all, just a nest of sleeping bags and pillows on a cool cave floor, and the words are Steve’s as Steve plants earnest kisses on his hairline, his temple, his jaw, his neck, his collarbone, and then his shoulder, the seam where metal meets flesh.

“Buck?” he whispers _._ “Do you remember that time I kissed you in a cave in the middle of Africa?”

 

*

“You really _never_ did it before?! What about Peggy?”

“She was real proper.”

“Not even with those USO girls?”

“I didn’t love any of ‘em.”

“Always the idealist,” Bucky sighs happily.

 

*

“ _Carter_? That blonde in Berlin’s last name was _Carter_?!”

Bucky reaches over to flick Steve’s forehead, hard.

“Ya don’t go kissin’ your best girl’s relatives, Rogers!”

“I know, I know,” he groans, rubbing the spot Bucky hit.

“There are rules about that sort of thing, you shitwit,” Bucky says between naked, full bodied laughs. He's not even sure how many days Steve has been over. Time has gone sideways. They've talked about anything and everything and there's still more to talk about. 

“I was just trying to thank her, and—I don’t know _what_ I was doing," Steve admits. "All it did was make me think of Peggy.”

“Jesus, Peggy’s ghost is gonna show up and start shooting at you all over again.”

Steve props himself up on his side, facing Bucky, who’s still sprawled out on his back. “Did you want me to marry Peggy?”

“God, yes. I was so jealous of you.”

“Wait—of me?”

“Hell yeah. I had to work so hard to even get it _up_ for a girl, and there you were falling head-over-heels in love with one. The _best_ one. And she loved you right back. Lucky bastard.”

“Geez, she was something, I tell ya.”

“She was. She was perfect. You two would’ve been perfect.”

 

*

“I was jealous of her,” Bucky says softly later, his head on Steve’s chest, listening to his heartbeat. “She was gonna spend the rest of her life with you, and have _kids_ with you, and I was—I didn’t know what I was gonna do. I felt like I was sinking. Every time I saw you two together. I felt like I was gonna sink right through the floor.”

Steve kisses the top of his head, breathes him in.

“I never thought we’d get a chance,” Bucky confesses. “Never. But people like us. They have _parades_ now.”

“We went to the future, Buck. We’re time travelers.”

“It’s like some kinda H.G. Wells shit.”

 

*

Sleeping next to Steve again reveals a surprise, although it shouldn’t be a surprise: Steve has nightmares too. Between the two of them, Bucky thought he was the only one, a bizarrely self-centered thought all things considered. But yes, Steve has night terrors too. They happen less often than they used to, he says, but when they do, they’re possibly more chaotic than Bucky’s. Steve sounds like a full-on asthmatic, wheezing and sputtering because he thinks he’s drowning in the ice water of the arctic. Or he coils around Bucky so tightly he could give a boa constrictor a run for its money, because he’s imagining Bucky falling from the train again. That’s the most common one. He wakes up clutching Bucky to bruising, holding on for dear life.

“I thought you were dead,” he chokes out upon waking.

 

*

“Does this count as a honeymoon?” Bucky wonders aloud, just before flicking his tongue across Steve’s nipple and hearing that sharp, sweet intake of breath.

“I swear to God, Buck. I will take you on a honeymoon someday, and there will be no bats. Not a single one flyin’ around.”

Bucky could drown happily in the sight of Steve underneath him. The way he furrows his brows when he’s on the verge, bliss-sounds echoing everywhere.

They don’t get rough with each other, although physically they could certainly handle it. There’ll be time for that eventually. For now it’s more than enough to use their bodies for something good and safe and right. 

“How many days before they check on us to make sure we haven’t died?” Steve asks. It's probably been a week since Steve came out to this side of the jungle. They're running low on supplies. 

Bucky moves down and brushes his kiss-swollen lips against the jut of Steve's hipbone. “Guess we’ll find out.”

(9 days. That’s how long Sam and Natasha leave them alone before Sam is poking his head into the cave with his eyes closed, and a hand covering them too for good measure, and yelling out “HEY, LOVEBIRDS,” while Steve and Bucky scramble for clothing.)

 

 

 

 

“Welcome back to the land of the living, Barnes,” Natasha says fondly after he wins another round of poker. Nat and Sam visit the cave now. It's like how it was back at the hospital except less tech and more dirt and much, much more peace.

He sweeps a pile of rocks-for-chips toward himself greedily. “Glad to be here.”

“You gave me quite a scare, by the way” she says, almost mother-like.

“I gave me quite a scare, too,” he says sheepishly. When they ante-up again they give each other meaningful glances, because they know just how much value this cave actually holds.

“ _Spasibo,”_ he tells her.

“For what?”

 _"You pulled a gun on me,_ ” he says in Russian so Steve can’t understand. “ _You would’ve used it. For him.”_

_“I love him too. Maybe not in the same way you do. Although don’t think I haven’t thought about it. In detail.”_

Bucky points to the entrance of the cave dramatically. “ _Get out,”_ he jokes. Natasha laughs. Steve and Sam look grumpy about the language barrier.

Sam mutters something, organizing his hand, taking a swig of palm wine.

“ _For the record_ ,” Natasha continues, ignoring Sam. _“I’m glad I didn’t have to shoot you in the head.”_

“Me too,” Bucky says in English, truly and goodly and absolutely meaning it. The past few months wash over him, the highs and lows, all of it, and he’s just happy to be alive, playing cards with fellow former soldiers.

 _“So—that book you gave me,”_ Bucky says, switching back to Russian. _“It broke my heart.”_

“ _Mine too_ ,” she says, suddenly more ageless and thoughtful and beautiful than Bucky’s ever seen her. She’s breathtaking in all her complexity.  It might take a lifetime or four to fully comprehend the details of her. For all he knows, she may well have been there, against her own will, when Lumumba went down. For all he knows, she’s a time traveller too. They might’ve been there together. He won’t ask for specifics and maybe he doesn’t need them. They are twins, somehow, and that’s all that matters.

 _“You know, if you need to talk about it,”_ Bucky proposes, _“Sam’s a pretty good listener after all.”_

“ _I’m starting to learn that_ ,” she says, glancing at Sam almost like she’s offended. “ _How did this guy manage to crack us?_ ”

 _“_ _It’s a mystery.”_

“YO, Soviet assholes," Sam says. "Time for a team meeting." 

Bucky doesn't groan this time. 

 “First order of business: Steve is terrible at poker.”

_“Hey.”_

“Just means you’re honest,” Natasha consoles. She taps Steve’s arm patronizingly. Bucky stifles a laugh to the best of his abilities and fails.

“Second order of business: Are you two coming back to camp with us? Or do you wanna stay out here for a while longer?”

Steve just looks to Bucky like it’s completely up to him.

“I, uh. I dunno,” Bucky stammers.

“It’s fine, man. You stay here as long as you need.”

But Natasha clears her throat at that, and the three of them exchange glances like they’re sharing a secret.

“What?”

Steve ever so slightly shakes his head _No_ at Sam, who looks to Natasha, who’s clearly saying _yes_ to something with her eyebrows.

“Third order of business: we have some news.”

Bucky is full of foreboding. “Bad news?”

“Noo, not at allll,” Sam slurs a little, because he drank all the palm wine. “I mean the real news is that Natasha is a fucking psychic.”

“The real news,” Natasha clarifies. “Is that Ross _was_ connected to the Vibranium theft. And the Mutant detainments. Wikileaks released dozens of emails between him and the buyer. The public turned pretty fast. Apparently they don’t like it when you’re plotting to put their superheroes in prison camps. It’s an election year for President Ellis. Long story short, the Accords were dissolved. We’ve been pardoned.”

_“We?”_

“The three of us, I mean. Not you. We just thought you should know.”

“Congratulations,” Bucky says, a little dumbfounded. “But wait—how long ago did this all happen?”

“We found out shortly after you took off...” Natasha admits.

“Why _the hell_ ...well, why haven’t you….” _Why haven’t you left yet_ , is what he wants to ask.

And they all just stare at him, fond and exasperated, as if he’s missed the answer to a very simple math problem, as if they can read his mind: _Not without you._

“So what does this mean?” he asks instead.

“It means we can probably stand to hide you somewhere with air-conditioning now,” Natasha says. “It’ll be easier to get around. One fugitive instead of four.” Then she switches to Russian: _“The easiest thing would be for you to turn yourself in.”_

 _“Easy_ _?”_ Bucky gawks.

“Here we go again,” Sam grumbles. “Soviet assholery.”

_“Sympathy for the enhanced is at an all time high. If you’re ever gonna do it, now might be the best time. But Steve’s not going to like it.”_

_“I’m not ready for that,”_ Bucky says, stomach lurching at the mere thought.

“What are you two saying?” Steve asks with a hint of anger. He heard his name, at least, and Bucky’s change in tone.

“We’re just figuring out where to go next,” Natasha supplies, sort of truthfully.

“Don’t some of you have aliens to stop or a bus full of nuns to save, or some shit like that?” Bucky points out.

They all look at each other, lost. They don’t have a mission. It’s both thrilling and terrifying.

“Personally,” Sam says, “I think we’ve all earned a pretty damn long vacation. Only place we can’t go is Argentina. Oh, and Australia. The CIA got another tip. You’re currently in Australia. Apparently you only like countries that start with the letter A.”

“It’s up to you, Buck,” Steve says. “You and Nat are sort of the experts in this department. Where do you wanna go? We’ll go anywhere. What do you wanna see?”

Well, that’s overwhelming. What does the world look like when not viewed from a riflescope?

“Anything,” he says, a little excited. “Everything.”

He and Steve spend one more night in the cave. After a happy haze of kissing and touching and coming, they fall asleep heavily and both wake up to bad dreams: Bucky of being hunted, Steve of Bucky falling from the train again. They try to calm each other down, but they’re both spooked and uncomfortable and pensive, bombarded by a double whammy of nerves before their would-be joyful jungle exodus.

Nevertheless, at dawn Bucky packs up his playing cards and his sketches and his book and crawls out of the tunnel for the last time, walking straight into the unknown.

 

 

 

**PRETORIA, SOUTH AFRICA**

* * *

 

Natasha hands something to Bucky she calls “bull tongue” and Bucky just stares at her and then at the dried brown strip of meat and then back at her again.

“ _Biltong_ , not bull tongue. It’s jerky.”

“Oh,” Bucky says, relieved, shoving it in his mouth.

“Ostrich jerky, in this case.”

His eyes widen in surprise, but he keeps chewing, because as it turns out, ostrich is delicious.

 

 

Natasha dyes her hair chestnut brown and when they’re sitting at an outdoor cafe she rattles off an order in Afrikaans, because of course she does, and the waitress smiles politely. Bucky shifts his baseball cap lower, keeps his head down. Soon they’re drinking hot mugs of a cocoa-type substance Natasha calls Milo, even though it’s summer here, and also, coincidentally, Christmas fucking Day, which Bucky hasn’t celebrated in who knows how long.

The cafe has multi-colored lights strung up everywhere and plays holiday music, some of which they recognize, some of which they don’t. It’s a strange place, really. Bucky can’t tell if he’s in Africa still, or in Europe, or what.

Sam’s in an odd mood: overly cheerful. He keeps checking in on everyone, asking about holiday traditions, and attempting to cheer them up when nobody was necessarily in a bad mood to begin with anyway.

Finally Bucky sets down his mug. “You doing okay today, Sam?”

Sam looks startled by the question. “Me?”

“Yeah, you. Mr. Christmas cheer.”

Sam’s face falls and his shoulders slump. “I actually hate Christmas.”

Bucky claps him on the shoulder, gives it a consoling rub for the briefest of seconds. “You wanna talk about it?”

“I’ve created a monster,” Sam ribs.

“A story is for the telling, right?” Bucky reminds him.

Sam sighs, and they all know why. “I don’t even know where my dad is. I have no clue where he lives. And I know it’s stupid, but after I started getting on the news with the Avengers and everything, I figured maybe he’d try to contact me. Nothing. He could actually be dead for all I know. He’s getting up there in years. No idea where he is.”

“This conversation calls for alcohol,” Natasha interjects.

“Marry me,” Sam jokes.

Natasha hails the waitress. She quickly brings a very large bottle of a creamy dessert liqueur Natasha calls Amarula, which is dangerously and tooth-achingly sweet.

“I should try to track him down,” Sam continues. “But he’s the parent, you know? Isn’t he supposed to be the one to reach out?”

 

 

 

 

“I barely remember my parents,” Natasha says, taking a sip of her second glass. “I’m still not sure if they gave me up, or if I was taken.”

“What was your conditioning like?” Bucky asks, because he’s been wondering for awhile now, and she seems as open as she’s ever going to be.

She’s silent at that, contemplative. When she speaks again her voice is hollow. “…They let all the girls be friends as children. We lived together, played together. Then a little later on they dropped us off in the Tundra with a two-week walk back home and only enough supplies for a few of us to survive. I made it back.”

Steve places his hand on hers and gives it a squeeze, lets it go.

She throws back the rest of her drink. “I never needed an on-switch to kill. There’s not a part of me they haven’t touched.”

 

 

 

“I had a way off that plane,” Steve admits hoarsely, scrubbing a hand over his beard. “I probably had a few ways, I just couldn’t think fast enough. Didn’t really try. People think I’m brave. I just think of myself as expendable. Always have.”

 

 

 

The sun is setting golden-pink and the bottle is almost empty when Bucky says it: “Being on the run is different this time around. Right after D.C., people weren’t as aware of me. But the whole world knows me now. I feel like I’ve got eyes on me all the time. I’m more scared, I guess. I’ve got more to lose this time.”

Natasha pours the last round and holds up her glass. “Here’s to having something to lose.”

They toast with a clink.

“Geseënde Kersfees,” she then says.

“Gesundheit,” Sam responds.

“Merry Christmas, everybody,” Steve laughs.

“And God bless us,” Bucky quotes. “Every fucking one.”

 

 

 

 

 

Bucky used to think the zoo back home was impressive, but Prospect Park seems like nothing after spending a day in Pilanesberg National.

The creatures here don’t have cages. Instead they roam around like they own the Earth. Elephants, tons of them; buffalo, antelope, zebra, a rhino, and it takes most of the day, but they finally see hippos, which are apparently more deadly than the crocodiles that remain decidedly absent.

They don’t see any major predators at all, which makes sense. They’re hiding. Waiting for the cover of darkness.

The police start banging around their cheap hotel close to 3AM, but they aren’t there for Bucky. There was some sort of drug related disturbance a few doors down, no big deal, but the commotion sets Steve on edge and he insists they leave first thing in the morning anyway.

 

 

**MARRAKESH, MOROCCO**

* * *

 

“ _Why_ exactly couldn’t we go to Casablanca?” Bucky inquires grumpily, fiddling with his baseball cap, fiddling with his gloves, keeping his head down, always down.

“Trust me, Marrakesh is better. It’s smaller, but it has more soul,” Natasha insists, before flicking back her hair (now dyed jet black) and switching to French, because that’s what they’re pretending to be, after all: “ _J’aime Marrakesh_.”

She leads them past the front desk of the _riad_ and down a hallway.

“ _J’aime Marrakesh_ ,” Bucky repeats as they enter the open courtyard and he takes in the sight: It’s stunning and lush, with a massive ornate fountain in the center, along with fragrant lemon trees. After a short walk up an open iron-rod staircase, they enter the suite, which has multiple rooms, and is clearly over their on-the-run budget.

“How the hell are we managing this one, Romanoff?” Bucky asks.

“I have my ways.”

Bucky kisses her on the cheek gratefully and then leads Steve to what he decides is their bedroom. The walls are made up of ceramic tiles, all covered in delicate arabic calligraphy.

He throws open the window in awe to get a better view of the blood orange sunset silhouetting the Atlas mountains outside. The smell of saffron and jasmine and citrus is pouring in, permeating everything and they can hear faint music from the marketplace miles away.

“Okay, this. _This_ counts as a honeymoon,” Bucky says before kissing Steve. The sunset paints them all sorts of colors.

“ _Oui. J’aime Marrakesh_ ,” Steve murmurs into his mouth.

“ _Je t’aime,_ you punk.”

They break apart only when the the Islamic call to prayer blasts through the air, which feels like maybe something they shouldn’t kiss through. It’s haunting and lovely and mysterious, and little jarring too, so they curl up like cats by the window sill and just listen and look out in wonder together.  

 

 

 

Natasha and Sam bring back all sorts of goodies: lamb kabobs, rich dark roast coffee, clusters of sweet grapes, savory _tajine_ -cooked vegetables. Morocco might turn him into a chow hound again.

But Bucky’s too nervous to go to the marketplace himself, even at the promise of actual real live snake charmers. Well, maybe _Steve_ is too nervous for him to go to the marketplace and it rubs off on him. Too crowded, too many eyes, and there’s the memory of Bucharest: getting busted by a newspaper salesman. One wrong look. Just like that.

But it’s fine, because he and Steve have plenty of reasons to stay in the room.

 

 

 

Bar Churchill is 1930s themed, well-executed at that, and features live jazz. The four of them discover this on New Year’s Eve after Natasha finally convinces him and Steve to spiff up and vacate their bed.

He’s not sure if he’s allowed to touch Steve here. He doesn’t see any couples like them and drawing any extra attention to themselves isn’t the best idea. The thought sends him spiraling: after all this time, he still can’t dance with Steve in public.

It’s Natasha who grabs his hand and drags him to the dance floor, while Sam and Steve sip Old Fashioneds in a booth.

“I thought you didn’t dance.” He’s rusty as hell himself.

“Haven’t in a long time,” she acknowledges, although you certainly couldn’t tell. She’s classically trained, must be. He twirls her and she glances over to Sam, who beams at her like he’s proud. Like maybe the steps of this dance aren’t as effortless as they appear. The music slows.

“I’ve been meaning to ask--and you don’t have to tell me--did we know each other before? ...Are you older than you look?”

“James,” she says, because she’s decided to start calling him that. “I can neither confirm nor deny my age. But I’ll say this: I’ve lived a lot of different lives. You’ve popped up in several of them.”

He twirls her again.

“This is definitely my favorite version of you though,” she says flirtatiously. “You were a little scary before.”

“Sorry.”

“Don’t be. I was scary too.”

“I remind you of it all, don’t I?” he asks heavily.

“Sometimes. I was afraid of you at first, back in Wakanda. Not because I thought you’d hurt me, but because of what you made me remember. I had blocked out a lot.”

“I’m sorry.”

“Don’t be,” she soothes again. “The good and bad it's-it’s all mixed up together. I’ve spent so much time unable to be happy because I wouldn’t let myself be sad. So don’t be sorry.”

“ _Ya lyublyu tebya,_ ” Bucky says. “So much. You know that?”

“I do. So will you do something for me?”

“Anything.”

 _“Will you turn yourself in?”_ she requests in Russian.

He feet stop working for a second.

Natasha leans forward, whispers in his ear in their shared language: _“I can get a team of lawyers for you. The best. Chances of an innocent verdict are higher than you’d think. The world knows the bombing in Vienna wasn’t you. They know you were framed, Stark made sure everybody found that out. It’s created a lot of public sympathy. The only reason some people still think you’re guilty is because you keep running.”_

_“It would wreck Steve. He just got me back.”_

“I’m not saying it would be easy.”

“I don’t….I don’t wanna answer all their questions. I don’t wanna tell some courtroom. I spent the last few months ripping it all open. I don’t wanna do it again.”

“So, what? You’re gonna hide forever?”

The song ends and a countdown starts, because it’s almost midnight, and Steve and Sam are now at their sides, along with most of the club. When the shouts of happy new year and _bonne année_ start and confetti rains down _,_ everyone's too busy hugging and kissing to notice that Steve and Bucky are hugging and kissing.

Steve and Bucky are also too busy hugging and kissing to notice two things: 1) That Sam and Natasha are also hugging and kissing, albeit more chastely and certainly just for fun, and 2) that a TV in a far corner by the bar displays the headline WINTER SOLDIER SPOTTED IN SOUTH AFRICA.

They crawl back into the booth and order champagne, because nobody is tired yet. They’re buzzing on something close to optimism. Maybe something related to it, but only distantly. Optimism twice removed.

“Okay, team meeting,” Sam says, and Bucky almost spits his champagne from laughing, because Sam is Sam, God bless him.

“New Year’s Resolutions - Go. I’ll start.” Because Sam always does. “I need to floss more. I really haven’t since Wakanda. It’s kind of a problem.”

Natasha rolls her eyes. “I resolve to dance more this year.”

Sam kisses her cheek and she lets him, because: optimism twice removed.

Steve grabs Bucky’s hand underneath the table. “My resolution is to be less reckless.”

They all look at him like he’s got three heads.

“It’s called personal growth.”

Bucky almost spews his champagne again. When he’s taken his gloved hand off of his mouth, he tries to think of a resolution. Nothing comes.

“Sarge?” Sam prompts.

Bucky looks at Natasha, remembering everything she said while they danced, picturing the moment when the handcuffs would go on, a life in jail, bars blocking his vision, always.

“I resolve to...enjoy the moment.”

“ _Bonne année,”_ Natasha says, raising her flute. They all echo her sentiments.

Clink.

 

 

 

Bucky is lost in thought and staring out the window when Steve gets the brilliant idea to sidle up behind him quietly and slip his arms around Bucky’s waist.

The reaction is instantaneous: Steve gets an elbow to the face before he gets slammed up against the wall, his head snapping back sharply, which causes a few tiles to break and fall and shatter on the floor.

“Shit, Steve. I’m so sorry,” Bucky says, snapping out of it, horrified. He thought he was going to die. He thought he was going die. He’s not going to die.

Steve wipes blood off his mouth. It’s dripping from his nose. “I’m an idiot. _I’m_ sorry.”

It’s just a nose bleed. They were practically an everyday occurrence back in Brooklyn, and Steve heals a whole lot faster now, so there’s no rational reason to beat himself up about it.

Yet somehow it sends him spiraling down, and he can’t get out of bed for a few days, then weeks, but for different reasons than before. He thought he was going to die. He thought he was going to die and he would’ve _killed_ Steve _._

He avoids sex. He avoids even touching or _talking_ to Steve until--  

 

**BARCELONA, SPAIN**

* * *

 

\--they’re standing on Carrer de Provenca first thing in the morning before too many people are out and about, staring up at Gaudi style architecture. It’s the oddest sort of architecture. The building looks slightly melted, but in a beautiful way. Or maybe like a slightly wet sandcastle. Bucky grabs Steve’s hand and Steve’s whole body goes slack with relief at his gesture, like his every cell had been holding its breath since they’d last connected.

“Bucky,” he says, resolved. “I’m only going to say this once. I can handle you. No matter what you throw at me. I can handle it. _We_ can handle it. So don’t pull away like that again, okay? _That_ is what I can’t handle. You are not a problem. Your absence is. Do you understand?”

Bucky nods yes, and then leads him by the hand to a park.

“Remember when you wanted to be an artist?” Bucky asks from their the bench, because there’s art everywhere in Barcelona. The place is alive with it.

Steve smiles. “I should’ve stuck with that.”

“Why didn’t you?”

“I wanted to be...useful,” Steve confesses. “I guess art doesn’t _help_ anybody.”

“Helps me.”

“Maybe that’s what I’ll do. We’ll get settled down somewhere, wherever you want, and I’ll draw. I’ll build us a house, too. I’ll design it and everything.”

“You want kids?” Bucky asks abruptly, afraid of the answer.

He looks down. “Doesn’t seem like the best idea, given...everything.”

“Yeah,” Bucky agrees, guilt rising like bile.

 

 

**NICE, FRANCE**

* * *

 

“How about a dog?” Steve suggests brightly over wine.

 

 

**OLBIA TEMPIO, SARDINIA, ITALY**

* * *

 

“No way in hell are we getting anything called a Labradoodle,” Bucky declares, letting a freezing teal wave crash over him. It’s entirely too cold to be in the ocean, but the beach was deserted and they couldn’t resist water this clear and bright. Bucky’s long sleeve wet-suit shirt sort of itches. But covering up his arm is a small price to pay in order to enjoy this moment.

Sam and Natasha stay on the white shore, cuddled in blankets, talking animatedly.

Steve splashes him. “If we hide out somewhere in Canada we could get a husky.”  

“Now you’re talkin.”

 

 

 

“You really wanna settle down in Canada?” Bucky asks as they’re walking to shore.

“No.”

“You wanna go back to Brooklyn, don’t you?”

Steve sighs and kicks out at the sand. “In an ideal world.”

 

 

 

They almost go to Rome. They _should’ve_ gone to Rome, so Steve could see the Sistine Chapel, because it’s Michelangelo and Steve’s an _artist_ now, for crying out loud. But Vatican City is so well guarded Bucky can’t risk it ( _metal detectors_ , Natasha pointed out kindly) and so Steve refuses to go and then there’s talk of Venice, but Steve also refuses that, because it’s too close to Azzano, and Bucky wants to yell but he holds it in.

“Sooo we’ll be back tomorrow,” Sam assures slowly, eyeing the two of them like they’re bombs about to go off. They take the quinjet to the mainland, leaving Bucky and Steve in a tent by the sea.

 

 

 

“Buck?” Steve whispers. “Do you remember the Tilt-a-Whirl?”

“No.”

“Didn’t think so.”

“Why? What happened at the Tilt-a-Whirl?”

“We didn’t ride it.”

Bucky turns over toward him in their mess of sleeping bags. “That’s a fantastic story. Thrilling.”

“You know why we didn’t ride it?”

“....Because...you were too short,” Bucky recalls slowly.

“Yeah. They wouldn’t let me on it. So you refused ride it.”

“The Sistine Chapel is hardly a carnival ride.”

“It’s the principle of the matter.”

Then Bucky is shaking his head and laughing exasperatedly and kissing Steve and crawling on top of him, straddling him, because he just can’t help himself.

“What am I gonna do with you? ‘The _principle_.’ You and your goddamn principles. Take off your clothes, Rogers. That’s an order.”

 

 

 

 

“Buck?” he whispers, spent.

“Mmm?”

“Can we get the hell out of Europe already? I already lost you once to the place. I worry here. Too much.”

“Stevie, I hate to break it to you, but there is no where we can go where you won’t worry.”

 

 

They can’t go to Brooklyn. When they’re in the air, Natasha explains how the area is under heavy surveillance, via a myriad of methods, because the authorities expect Bucky to show back up there, of course they do. When it really sets in, Steve face falls like he’s been mortally wounded. It’s Vatican City all over again, except this time it’s _their_ Holy City and Bucky inexplicably thinks of Sunday school at St. whatshername’s Church and how God let the Israelites wander in the desert for 40 years before they found the promised land.

 

 

**NEW ORLEANS, LOUISIANA**

* * *

 

“I haven’t been on a double date in so long,” Natasha comments dryly.

Sam looks up at her incredulously, mouth full of beignet. There’s powdered sugar all over his face. A little flies out into the air when he speaks: “Pffft, this whole trip has been a double date.”

“So are you two….” Steve starts to ask.

“NO!” they both say at the same time, deeply annoyed. Then they laugh at each other fondly and Natasha orders more coffees, because Cafe Du Monde doesn’t serve alcohol, which is weird because it’s everywhere else in this Spanish-moss covered city.

“Happy Valentine’s Day, boys,” she coos, raising her cup.

 

 

**ATLANTA, GEORGIA**

Sam has an auntie who lives in Buckhead, very wealthy and tough as nails, with plenty of spare bedrooms. Natasha bleaches her hair blonde and fakes a Southern accent, which is unnecessary, since no one in Atlanta seems to have one anyway. Steve loves the High Museum of Art, and how bustling the whole city is, although he could do without the traffic, and it seems terribly odd to him that there’s only a few public transit lines.

Sam takes them to get chicken and waffles at Gladys Knight’s place because he’s never been and they drink so much sweet tea they feel high off the sugar and caffeine, even the Supersoldiers.

“Okay,” he starts, slap happy. “Team meeting--”

 

**NASHVILLE, TENNESSEE**

“--First order of business: I hate this music. Except for Johnny Cash. He’s okay.”

 

**CHICAGO, ILLINOIS**

“Second order of business: this pizza is delicious.”

 

  
**Ft. COLLINS, COLORADO**

“Third order of business,” he puffs, “this should be legal everywhere.”

Bucky puts his hands over the campfire, warming them.

 

**GRAND CANYON NATIONAL PARK, ARIZONA**

“Next order of business: Happy 100th Birthday, Sarge.”

“Thanks, everybody.” He stares out into the Canyon, nuzzling into Steve’s shoulder, happy.

Happy, but still hiding.

He can hide in plain sight, easy peasy, he knows how. He can disappear into thin air and show up on the other side of the globe. Covering up who he truly is second nature. He’s a professional. He’s had a lifetime of practice. He can make it so he was never really here at all.

 

 

 

**UNDISCLOSED LOCATION, MONTANA**

* * *

 

“I have to turn myself in,” he tells Natasha when it’s just the two of them on Clint’s porch.

Natasha tips forward a little in her rocking chair, serious. “What changed your mind?”

“Clint took Steve to look at _land_ today. He wants to build me a house. In _Montana._ ”

“And you don’t wanna live in Montana.”

“ _Steve_ doesn’t really wanna live in Montana. We’d rot out here. It’s too quiet. And you know what? When we were at the Canyon, I kept trying to enjoy it, but all I could think about is that the authorities know I’m in the States now, and they have just cause to shoot on sight. It’s like you said. They think I’m guilty because I don’t stop running. I can’t---I can’t do this anymore.”

He puts his head in his hands. “A house in Montana sounds a whole lot better than a prison cell. But it’s still not what I want.”

There are a lot of things he wants, turns out. They flash in his mind rapid-fire style, from the littlest stupid indulgences (cigarettes, chocolate, a whole bookshelf full of H.G. Wells) to the seemingly impossible pleasures: an apartment in Brooklyn with a terrace; decent and honest work, work with his hands; to go out to bars and dance like the old days (except not like the old days, because he’d be with Steve); to go back to school to learn everything he missed while frozen; to be able to ride the subway without a worry; and most of all, to love Steve without having to look over his shoulder ever again.

“I’ve spent so much time trying to convince myself that I’m not a victim. That a guilty sentence is what I deserve. But,” he falters, overcome by the reality of it. “But it’s not my fault. Why am I still running? It’s not my fault.”

“I think a jury would agree with you.”

“They _better_. Because otherwise they’re gonna have to deal with Steve.” And that’s when he starts crying. “You gotta take care of him during all of this. You hear me?”

“You know I will.”

“And if they don’t let me off--”

“They will. But we need to move soon if that’s the plan.”

He nods his head in agreement and wipes his eyes. “There’s just one more place I gotta see first. One last stop.”

 

 

 

He doesn’t tell Steve yet. But when they make their way up to the attic of the Barton’s home for the night, Bucky’s extra desperate and feverish to get Steve’s clothes off. Once they’re both naked, the sickest, saddest thought creeps in: he wishes the both of them could scar. He wishes all of their wounds were visible instead of intangible, so that they could press their lips to each and every rough spot, but also for the _evidence_. A jury would demand it. He wants to string up all their tormentors from a tree.

 

 

 

This time it’s Bucky who dreams of the train, the fall, the snow, and the hand reaching out to him. It was so close, so close. He’s sweat-soaked and half-asleep and clutching Steve under blankets. He’s holding on for dear life, boa constrictor style.

“Wake up, Buck,” Steve urges.

“I fell,” he moans, blinking furiously, more awake, but still unsettled. “I fell,” he repeats, as if it’s just happened.

“I’m sorry,” Steve soothes, pulling him to his chest. “I should’ve caught you.”

“Not your fault. Not our fault.”

Steve doesn’t say anything to that, just holds him. Safe.

 _“Gruzovoy avtomobil,”_ Bucky says suddenly.

“What?”

“ _Gruzovoy avtomobil_ ,” he pants, “It means. Freight car. Like. Like the one I fell from. It was. It was one of my trigger words.”

“ _What_? God, Buck—”

“Will you say that for me?”

_“Why?”_

“Trust me. Say _gruzovoy avtomobil_.”

 _“Gruzovoy avtomobil,”_ Steve obeys, holding him tighter. 

“That’s ours now,” Bucky declares quietly. “ _It's_ _ours_. It means something else now. It’s _proof_.”

“Of what?”

“It’s like that dumb plaque at the museum said. I read it every day when I lived there. It said we’re inseparable. And it’s true. It’s impossible to separate us. No matter what, we find our way back to each other. Always do, always will. _Inseparable_.”

 _“Gruzovoy avtomobil,”_ Steve says again.

 

 

 

**ALASKA, PRESENT DAY**

* * *

 

 

“There’s something I gotta tell you…” Bucky says to Steve, kneading the snow between his fingers. “I, uh. Well, there’s no easy way to say this, but. Well.”

“Spit it out, Buck.”

“Spit what out?” Natasha asks, appearing from behind the trees and gesturing for them to scoot over to give her some room on their boulder. She sits next to Bucky.

“I was just about to tell him,” Bucky says to her.

“Ah, we’re just in time for the fist fight.”

“The hell are you talking about?” Sam asks.

“That’s what I’d like to know,” Steve insists.

Bucky takes a deep breath. “I’m turning myself in after this.”

“Buck, _no_ —”

“This is the best time,” Natasha defends. “He can win, I promise.”

“Or they could lock him up for life,” Sam points out.

“Or _worse,”_ Steve adds desperately. “I don’t trust—”

“I know lawyers—”

“No way—”

“—he can’t run forever—”

“Buck—”

“—stop trying to talk for him—”

“It’s his choice—”

“So why are you pushing it? If—”

“SHHHHHH,” Bucky commands. “Quit yammering and _look_.”

They all go quiet and still and awestruck as electric gold starts to spread across the sky, as if any sudden noise or movement might scare it away. Other colors slowly spill out like paint in water: bright purples, a touch of red, and so much blue and green.

“It…it sort of looks like when Wanda uses her powers,” Natasha whispers, even though there’s no real reason to whisper.

“I didn’t expect it to _move_ like that,” Sam says hoarsely. “Like it’s _flowing_.”

There’s one flare and pulse of light after another and before too long the atmosphere itself is a vivid, undulating kaleidoscope illuminating their faces.

“This puts 4th of July fireworks to shame,” Steve murmurs reverently.

Bucky agrees but can’t even get the words out at the moment, because maybe there really are none, not for this. He and Steve spent so many years trapped in frozen tundra, but they’ve never seen an aurora until now. How many times did the Northern Lights flash in the sky above them, while they were half-dead and imprisoned? They were forced to feel the raw sting of the ice, in their lungs and in their minds and in their hearts, but they never had the chance to see the jaw-dropping beauty of what comes with it.

Steve takes his hand; Natasha leans her head gently on his arm, the metal one, because she doesn’t mind it; Sam is standing behind the three of them, thankful and shepherd-like, looking up.

 

 

 

Later, when he puts his hand on the Bible and swears to tell the truth and nothing but, he lets his hand shake, because while he may be the best sniper in the US Army, he’s human too, and scared. But _he’s proud of this struggle, of tears, of fire_ and even when the prosecution asks him questions that freeze a scream in his throat, he clears it and presses on. A story is for the telling, and this one’s his: For the weary soldier, redemption’s not a verdict or a finish line to cross, but instead a series of inexplicable flickers. The glint of a diamond. A lantern. A burst of color in the night.

*

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*

*

*

*

*

“Buck?” Steve whispers. “Remember when you won your case?”

 


	2. Notes

I have visited the majority of the locations mentioned in this story, but I’ve never been to Alaska and I’ve never seen the Northern Lights. I hope I get there someday.

I hope we all get there.

 

Extinction Therapy is a real method for eliminating conditioned behavior, although most examples I researched used rats and dogs and not so much humans. We’re going to pretend that it would work on humans, okay? My partner is like a professional or whatever, and he said “maybe.” I've seen at least two other fic authors use it. That means it's practically CANNON, right? RIGHT? 

According to some versions of comic lore, Wakanda did in fact create Quinjets, not SHIELD. Interesting, no?

Ghudaza is not a real country (SURPRISE), but it’s real in the Black Panther universe.

City Park is now called Commodore Barry Park. I walked past this place once. It had a baseball field and that’s all I remember. I don’t know exactly where Steve and Bucky lived as children, but imma pretend it was somewhere in the general vicinity of this place, because it's more or less all I could recall of Brooklyn other than my friend's apartment and the FOLIAGE. The autumn foliage in NYC is beautiful, good lord.

Wakanda’s rainy season is based on Rwanda’s: Oct-Nov, then another longer one from March-May. (Our beloved superheroes got the fuck outta that jungle before the longer one hit, whew!)

“The Raft was definitely a human rights violation.” UH, YEAH. The Accords actually make little sense. I kept hearing Natasha’s voice in my head saying, “Be careful, you might not want to pull on that thread.” Because 117 countries? Created a law?? That people had to sign for it to apply to them??? And then they threw the dissenters into a secret floating prison??????? HOW WAS ANYONE LET ALONE THE U.N. OKAY WITH THAT IDEA? I swear Ross used some kinda mind control, because that’s not typically a thing Ban Ki-moon would be on board for, ya know?

JAMES BUCHANAN (BARNES) HAS THE SAME NAME AS THE FIRST GAY PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES. STUCKY IS REAL. If he wasn’t such a shitty president it would be fun to write a historical AU about this whole situation.

“Because one way or another, the shit we keep locked up inside kills us. I don’t wanna see that happen to you. I’ve seen it happen too many times.” Somewhere around 18-22 military veterans commit suicide every day.

The details of Congolese history are true, albeit overly simplified. Uranium mined and acquired from the Congo MADE THE FIRST A-BOMBS. The USA is shady as fuck and probably (absolutely) was involved in Patrice Lumumba’s murder. The USA and the USSR were in fact still fighting over uranium in the 50s/60s. Bucky and Natasha may or may not have been there. Bucky doesn’t know. I don’t know.

For a more thorough look from a literary perspective, I highly recommend reading Barbara Kingsolver’s The Poisonwood Bible, from which I drew a lot of inspiration. I highly recommend reading ANYTHING by Kingsolver. Stop reading my notes right now and shut the computer and go read her stuff instead. It’s 12,000 times better.

Isaiah 2:4 is the scripture Sam references.

Dr. Mukwege is a real person.

Those are actual lines from the original Winnie the Pooh.

I didn’t go in-depth with the sex scenes, but if anyone out there would like to do the lovely work of creating some extended edition cave porn for this fic BE MY GUEST. GO TO TOWN. I WILL READ IT ALL. Seriously, I would love that. Just make it tender and sweet, k? They’ve been through so much.

 

Oh, and here's a Spotify playlist. Just songs that I listened to while writing this. 

 

 

 


End file.
